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 hastwelvefourteen teams from mostly the Midwest, includingMinneapolis, Minn., Dubuque, Iowa,Ann Arbor, Michigan,ColumbusYoungstown, 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.
8 comments:
You can strike through Minneapolis and Dubuque as well, as neither are current members of the league.
I emailed him on that, he blamed the Wiki-hole, so I presume he was looking at the list of FORMER teams.
I hope this happens! Junior hockey is great and growing in the U.S! I could see it being successful in Huntington. USHL is pretty high level hockey and I think fans would be easily entertained. I saw a game in Columbus and enjoyed it more than the NHL game I saw while I was there too.
Plus not having to pay salaries means more money for marketing and and promotions to get people to the rink and see how exciting it is.
Not only do you not have player salaries, you don't have to worry about worker's comp insurance on the players either. Both of these are significant expenses for pro teams.
Is this really going to happen? I think it would be great to see, the level of hockey is very fun to watch!
I wrote the author of the newspaper story and never received a reply. Be that as it may, the USHL has been one of the more consistantly stable leagues over the past several years, with nowhere near the number of franchise shifts or failures that other leagues have seen.
If the logistics work out, this could be something good for Huntington.
So it has been a while since we have heard any information regarding a USHL team here in Huntington.
Just wondering what the status of things are?
I know that improvements need to be made to facility is there really any money for a project like this? Or are our hopes for a return of hockey to Huntington just pie in the sky!
Improvements do need to be made, and I know AJ at the BSSA wanted to have some improvements made. I don't foresee anything happening before July, however, with the municipal spending freeze taking effect earlier than usual (the new fiscal year kicks off July 1). Beyond this reading of tea leaves, however, I haven't heard of anything new...
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