Finds like this are why I started on this

Another thanks to Tom at the EHL webpage for hooking me up with NewspaperArchive. I've been so torn on what little revelation to put up here, but I think this one takes the cake. From the Charleston Daily Mail, November 5, 1940:

"Formation of a six-team hockey league in which the Charleston Comets would play 20 league games plus seven home matches with Huntington is the goal of James R. Chandlee, who will direct hockey activities this season at the Ice Sports rink.

At a meeting held recently at Pittsburgh, plans were discussed for organizing a league composed of teams from Charleston, Huntington, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Akron and Johnstown.

John Harris of Pittsburgh, manager of Duquesne Gardens and owner of the Hornets' hockey team, expressed enthusiasm over the proposed league, saying he will enter his Smoky City skaters.

Owners of the Cleveland arena will enter their Cleveland Barons. Akron's new rink will lie
completed about Dec. 1 and Rubber City hockey entrepreneurs are eager to join the loop. In fact, so enthusiastic are the Akronites about West Virginians, they will feature Charleston and Huntington in opening-night matches.

Johnstown hns a rink but has never had a hockey team, though visiting professional teams have played there periodically in the past. The Johnnies are eager to organize a team and enter the league.

The proposed league would operate under the jurisdiction of the Amateur Hockey Association, which withdrew from the A.A.U. three years ago. While carrying the rating of amateur hockey, the teams would actually be semi-pro.

Chandlee said he hopes to have one of the best teams in the league and offer Charleston a high-class brand of hockey.

A proposed schedule and other details will be worked out at a meeting to be held next week. Among those who have indicated they will attend the next meeting are directors of hockey at New York's Madison Square Garden and P.E.M. Thompson, president of the Amateur Hockey Association and owner of the Atlantic City Sea Gulls."

Getting my money's worth

Tim from the comments--and, I should add, from a website on the history of the old Eastern Hockey League--referred me to NewspaperArchive.com, a subscription site with a plethora of newspaper clippings for me to sift through. While I sadly cannot sift through the Herald-Dispatch or Advertiser in this site, I can sift through the Charleston Gazette and Daily Mail, and have found the fate of Charleston's ice hockey exploits: their rink, Ice Sports in Kanawha City, was converted to a roller rink in 1942 as a result of the outbreak of World War 2. The preceding season, Charleston's high schools launched an ice hockey championship, complete with a sponsored trophy--the Union Fuel Trophy.

Sadly the rechristened Barlow Roller Rink met a similar fate, burning down in February 1945, only a few months before Huntington's Iceland/Arena Gardens. Luckily, they were in a new rink by July, and continued operating as such through the 1950s.

Thanks Mike!

Got your DVD of Blizzard-Admirals Game 3.

In related news, I might have some YouTube goodies from the WABAC machine soon (Inserting another friendly solicitation for video materials from you crazy kids out there...)...

I reckon there's more where this came from...

Big thanks to Mike (commenting in the club team thread) who put this on YouTube. He actually recorded this from the stands--caught the whole game, put this bit on YouTube. There's a 10-minute limit on videos, which is annoying and means that the game would be chopped into bits to be put up... but this is not an impossible task, particularly for preservation's sake.

TV--help me out guys!

Copying most of this from a comment about TV coverage--my guy Mike there says some Blizzard games were broadcast locally on the WB affiliate (Portsmouth?). I was wondering about the broadcast angle of things in Blizzardland--I hadn't delved into that corner of things, beyond the fact that both 'RVC and 'KEE-AM carried radio broadcasts at one point or another. I know TV games were kinda sporadic--a few here or there on cable--but hadn't seen much more (admittedly, I'd been spending a lot of time immersing myself in pre-war hockey shenanigans, when there was NO television).

So to that end, while I'm digging stuff out on the microfilms, help me out! Anyone have some videos, recordings, etc. of the Blizzard (or Marshall, or older (if at all possible!)) out there?

New club team?

Got this in the comments from "marhalluhockey":

"I am in the process of organizing a club hockey team for Marshall. Seems like there is a good response for it but depends on some tuff issues. Bad part is, we all know the closest ice is in Charleston but I have talked to the rink manager and he is going to help with ice time. I did not know Marhsall used to have a club team, I wish it was still going and the Blizzard was still here. I would have loved to watch them, just to young and when I got here everything was gone. If anyone has old game footage or pictures of Marshall's team and even the Blizzard I would love to see them. Anyother information that may help me bring hockey back to Marshall let me know!!"

Part two took me a while

I had invoked the Heroes because I think they, rightly or wrongly, reinforce a stereotype about Huntington that we either cannot or will not support professional sports. The problem, though--and of course anyone reading this feel free to help me elaborate, or correct me, whichever needs to be done--is that from my reading the sports teams in this town have generally suffered from either terrible marketing or terrible ownership of one sort or another. Hockey will not sell itself--sure, it has its niche in the area, and I think on a consistent basis you would have a rock-solid base of 1500 fans, but a professional team in the Big Sandy Superstore Arena is not feasible on 1500 fans per game. "Feasible" in a league of 5000 or so seat arenas means a ballpark figure of 3000 per game. This REQUIRES promotion, it REQUIRES stability, and REQUIRES a real understanding of what it takes to succeed in the market you're in. Any one of these absent, and the whole enterprise is doomed to failure.

Less sleepy now (part 1)

Replied to a comment yesterday about the prospects for another team landing here:

"Not a lot. In '03-04 there was an effort to get a team back in the arena in the SEHL/SPHL, but the arena GM at the time wasn't very receptive to the idea. As recently as last year though the current GM proposed refurbishing the arena with, among other things, new hockey boards and equipment; however, being a municipal facility, this would require city money, and the city is a bit on the cash-strapped side. Still, I think if the right people got their heads together... well I'll elaborate a bit more tomorrow, when I'm less sleepy"

So I'm less sleepy now. The big problem right now is that I have no idea who would take on the role of putting together such an operation. That aforementioned (actually ACHL) effort was mainly spearheaded by Mark Williams, the Blizzard's old VP of marketing, had some relatively high-dollar people in talks (quite a few people namedropped local attorney Buck Crews), and the endorsement of old Blizzard guy Jim Bermingham, who went to Knoxville after Huntington folded up and became the IceBears' coach. Again, this fell through to a great extent because of resistance from the arena then-management.

Since that time there have been, in my opinion, two significant developments, one positive and one negative. The positive one, first, is the hiring of AJ Boleski as general manager, who has stated a willingness to put money toward fixing up the old hockey equipment--as the H-D's David Walsh had told me, "he's open to just about anything". Then there's the rise and fall of the Huntington Heroes indoor football franchise, which was poorly promoted, had trouble paying its bills in a good season, and then suffered through a nightmare 2008 season in which they went through two owners, went 5-1 in their first six and then won one game the rest of the season when much of the team quit due to lack of payment!

More to come later--this is a LONG tangent I'm going on here.

Scoreboard, 22 September 2008

Time spent: 1h45
Time dug through: November-December 1938
Scores found: 1
Potential interviews: maybe if I had a time machine
Thoughts: the two best sportswriters of the 20th century, Duke Ridgeley and Ernie Salvatore, both had an affinity for hockey, and as such they have become indispensable resources in print and (Ernie anyway--Duke's been dead quite some time) in person. I'd like to not have to rely so much on one newspaper in an era when there were two newspapers to work with, but the old Herald-Dispatch seems to be the paper of record for the old Stars.

Apologies for a LONG layoff

For those who may have been tracking this with any kind of regularity, or those stumbling upon here for the first time wondering "well why hasn't this bugger updated?"--as tends to happen, the rest of my life decided to come beckoning. Only recently, with a promotion (and thus a more regular schedule), have I been able to even start thinking about getting back on this train, and it will probably involve me more or less starting over, from the beginning, from semi-scratch. I'll take what I have so far, but I need a clean slate (looking back I'm realizing I said the exact same thing about 9 months ago).

This means I will definitely be starting at 1938 in Huntington. I've got my basic timeline, with numerous gaps to fill:

1938: Iceland Arena opens, Stars begin playing
1941: Dick Deutsch takes over Iceland, replaces the ice surface with a year-round wood floor, renames it Arena Gardens. Marshall makes it their home, but the lack of ice knocks out ice hockey in the city
1945: Arena Gardens burns down
1947: Marshall wins NAIB championship, inspiring construction of...
1950: Veterans Memorial Field House, with an ice plant
1955: Grand Rapids Rockets, due to either poor attendance or arena issues, set up shop in Huntington as the Hornets; caretaker ownership wastes no time in trying to move the team to Evansville
1956: after two failed takeover attempts the team moves to Louisville
somewhere between 1956 and 1990: the ice plant at the Field House is removed
1977: Huntington Civic Center built
1992: discussions begin about installing ice plant at Civic Center for an ECHL expansion franchise
1993: Huntington Blizzard begin play
1994: Tri-State Ice Arena closes
1995: Blizzard ownership swap #1
1999: Blizzard ownership swap #2
2000: Blizzard close shop
2005: Tri-State Ice Arena closes

The strange people who comment here

Like one Mr. Shane Cartmill:

"Hi Lenny,

Great Huntington hockey blog that you have going. I wish there would have been enough interest to keep the Blizzard or another team going in the Tri-State during the late 90s, early 2000s, but it just wasn't to be.

When I started "Kicksave" on WMUL, it was Huntington's first hockey program. Period. We were it. And I developed a pretty good following. The Blizzard were really good to us, too. They needed marketing. I needed content. The only part of the show they objected to was the "Goon Of The Week" segment. Bob "Battleship" Kelly objected to it. In my opinion, that was pretty rich. But oh well.

We also had enough interest on campus to get a Marshall club team going. We played for about 3 or 4 years during my time on campus. After I graduated, I moved to Columbus and was too entrenched in my move to see what happened to the team. We did come back for some Blizzard games (including a playoff game, I think). But the Marshall hockey team was fun. We played all over the place and packed in some pretty good audiences. But that, too, had problems. The Tri-State Ice Arena wasn't as willing to work with us as they could have. They wouldn't cut us a break on ice expenses and they only would give us the rink at midnight. So, we eventually started to fail.

The Huntington Blizzard also had some issues. There were some problems among the management (mishandling of money, personal problems, etc.). I think the right management team might have been able to make it work. But the ECHL also outgrew Huntington. I think Huntington could have made the switch to a UHL team or, I think, Colonial Hockey League team (I think that was the rumor).

I still know several people in Huntington who come to Columbus to watch the Blue Jackets. So, you are right in saying the interest is still there. At least the core.But here's another tidbit. I spoke to the Columbus Blue Jackets radio/tv manager back in the fall. He said they were making great inroads in almost every surrounding market to have CBJ games broadcast on radio...except in one area. Can you guess? HUNTINGTON. They have affiliates in Portsmouth, Cincinnati, Pt. Pleasant, Chillicothe, etc. But they can't get a radio agreement in Huntington, Ashland or Ironton.

I think if people would have been more exposed to it, it may have succeeded. But here's some more background. I worked as WSAZ back in the late 80s, early 90s as an intern. I remember around that time that NBC was going to air the NHL All-Star game. But WSAZ made the decision to pull it in favor of Bill Dance's Outdoors (fishing) because it was more popular.

At any rate, hockey in Huntington was great while it lasted and I sure had a great time with it. I met a lot of great people and got to do a lot of cool things (interviewed Manon Rheume, Charlie Huddy, Andre Bashkirov, David Aebischer, John Craighead and more). It also was the springboard to my playing - which I still do at the age of 35 in Columbus adult leagues. I used to play in Pittsburgh (that was a long drive from Huntington) and Charleston. But when hockey came to Huntington, that was great. I played four or five nights a week."

Packing up again

Will be revisiting those old microfilms this week--in the meantime, the franchise formerly known as the Huntington Blizzard is relocating again. The (Beaumont,) Texas Wildcatters franchise is moving to Ontario, CA, to be called the Reign as a farm team of the LA Kings. Some rumbling has Beaumont getting a CHL team--would work better for them geographically, but I don't know if that would help the situation any...

What will there be on here?

I'm relaunching this--I have begun to more or less start from scratch on the whole thing, going back to the very first ice rink in Huntington, Iceland Arena, in 1938. I will be chronicling the three seasons of Huntington Stars hockey (1938-41), one season of Huntington Hornets (1954-55), and seven seasons of Huntington Blizzard (1993-2000), and any related sub-amateur exploits I can dig out during these stretches.