30 May 2009

Digging one tunnel, finding a new one (in more ways than one!)

The first three hockey games played at the Veterans Memorial Fieldhouse were all played with the Miami Valley Bruins in 1951. Based in Troy, OH, at that time they were an independent team; they would be rechristened the Troy Bruins for the 1951-52 season and were admitted into the IHL that season.

13 March 1951: Miami Valley Bruins 6, New York Rovers 4 (exhibition)
27 March 1951: Miami Valley Bruins 4, Hibbings Flyers 3 (OT) (semifinal of the National Independent Open Tournament; this would actually set up a rematch with the Rovers in the final of that tournament)
4 April 1951: Cleveland Barons 7, Miami Valley Bruins 3

Attendance was about 1500 for these games, and there were supposed to be more exhibition games played the next season, but so far no luck looking. (While looking this up, I noticed that there is a new incarnation of the Troy Bruins, in the UJHL independent junior league, which will be playing at Hobart Arena next season.)

Fast-forward to 1959, when the Toledo Mercurys found themselves booked out of half a season. Testing the waters in various temporary locales, they played an exhibition match against Huntington's old team, the Louisville Rebels, on 25 October (a 2-2 tie). Organized by Walter Arnold and Luigi Narcise--the same Narcise who tried to buy the Hornets a couple years earlier--they drew 2000 for the game, enough to warrant further consideration by the Mercurys.

While they unexpectedly elected to play some games in St. Louis (and this season they are referred to in the record books as the Toledo-St. Louis Mercurys), as of late December 1959 (when I stopped microfilming this afternoon), the Mercurys made an overture to Arnold and Narcise to play their February-March schedule in Huntington. As the Huntington Advertiser pointed out, however, this would have been problematic due to the coinciding Golden Gloves boxing tournament and West Virginia Catholic High School Basketball Tournament--half the dates would have to have been rescheduled.

Of most interest on my end of things, however, is--and this is not at all unexpected--Arnold and Narcise were using the Toledo match(es?) as a means to test the waters for an IHL expansion franchise in 1960-61. They had even considered buying the star-crossed Denver Mavericks team, but the combination of schedule mismatches and severe financial difficulties ultimately discouraged them (the team ultimately ended up in Minneapolis).

Help me gang--were there any other games, either with Troy or Toledo (or any other teams for that matter)? And whatever became of Arnold and Narcise's expansion efforts?

25 May 2009

Rutherford: it's the USHL

Tony with another scoop (and a goof, I'll point it out momentarily):

Huntington, WV (HNN) – Prior to the Tuesday, May 26 Huntington City Council meeting, Big Sandy Superstore Arena Director A.J. Boleski has requested to make a presentation regarding the United States Hockey League.

Huntington has had several experiences with professional minor league hockey, which at its best with the team winning saw an increase in downtown traffic and good attendance to the lower echelons when the team was near the cellar. The same with Arena Football and variations thereof. Even, graduated MU football players couldn’t turn several of those teams into financial survivors.

Although nothing has been made public about the proposal, the United States Hockey League is the top junior ice hockey leave in the U.S. It’s a strictly amateur league with players 20 years and under. Since the league is amateur, the players do not lose NCAA playing status.

Currently, the league has twelve fourteen teams from mostly the Midwest, including Minneapolis, Minn., Dubuque, Iowa, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Columbus Youngstown, Ohio, and Fargo, N.D.


Junior hockey is something I'd considered, but again, the geography is off here as it is with every other league. It would be a good fit with Huntington's image as of late, however, as a center for amateur sports--WV high school tournaments in wrestling and volleyball, little league baseball, the soccer tournament in Barboursville, not to mention the decades of amateur boxing tradition here, either in Golden Gloves or Toughman.

22 May 2009

Press--and A NEW HOCKEY TEAM?!

HuntingtonNews.net plugs this site while mentioning a group coming to Huntington this coming week with a proposal to city council re: a new hockey team!

A couple bits he did goof on though--the Hornets were 1956-57, and the Packers have both a for-profit and non-profit entity.

So welcome to all those dropping by, feel free to peruse this fine site and drop a line.

20 May 2009

Whoo links!

I finally discovered the "links" tab on the side there and made some changes to it.

12 May 2009

No-good news is no news

Something that's bothered me on the Stars/Comets end of things is that I have to go to Charleston's paper to find anything about Huntington's rink closing. There is a total whitewash in the Herald-Dispatch and Advertiser regarding the closure of Iceland, with articles talking about how Charleston doesn't want to play Huntington, fearing a bloodbath, while ads in the paper trumpet half-price hockey on a date when Toledo was supposed to be in town for a Tri-State League matchup...

07 May 2009

A shoutout

I don't know how I JUST NOW got into this, but I thought I'd pass it along... a band called THE ZAMBONIS. I'd heard of them, but until about 15min ago I'd never actually listened to their music--EVERY SONG THEY MAKE IS ABOUT HOCKEY. Here's a link for yas :^D

06 May 2009

Throw those attendance figures out the window

I've reached the point where the dung hit the fan as far as the Morris Jeffreys era--a near-million-dollar suit filed by Bank One regarding loans dating back to the Bob Henry era--and in the middle of it all a revelation that the attendance figures during the Henry years that their attendance figures were boosted by quite a few freebies. So THAT explains my little graph there...

05 May 2009

Narrowed down the beginning of the end...

Attendance increased over the course of every Blizzard season* except one: the 1998-99 season. After this season Morris Jeffreys sold the team to David LeFevre and Beacon Sports, and after another season the team was out the door. The question: why? Where did it go wrong? As always, if anyone can chip in I'd appreciate the hell out of it; as it is I'll be hitting more microfilms this week.


*--although, as my earlier graph showed, not necessarily from one season to the next

04 May 2009

The sports franchise as civic organization

With some more rumblings that Wheeling may not have a very long time left in the ECHL, some of the message board chatter brought up an interesting--but not unprecedented--concept: the operation of a sports franchise not strictly as a business, but as a civic organization. The most notable example of this is the Green Bay Packers, who have operated as a public corporation since their inception in the 1920s. The corporation's bylaws state that all profits from a relocation will go to local charity (previously the American Legion, now the Green Bay Packers Foundation), helping to ensure that a metropolitan area about the size of Huntington has continuously held an NFL franchise for over 80 years.

The Packers aren't entirely a non-profit entity--they're in the NFL, such a concept would be an oxymoron--but there are a few teams that actually are: the Memphis Redbirds (AAA baseball), the Great Lakes Loons (A baseball, Midland, MI), and the Kentucky Horsemen (Arena Football 2, Lexington, KY). I like the idea primarily because the investment by the community in a sports team is not purely financial, but equally if not moreso emotional. It goes well with the last bit I brought up, the idea of having control of a team shared among a relatively large group of local investors.