Where are they now--Jared Bednar

The South Carolina Stingrays won their third Kelly Cup this weekend, in former Blizzard D Jared Bednar's second year coaching them. Traded to the Stingrays in the middle of the 1995-96 season, he played parts of five of the next six seasons in North Charleston (when he wasn't being called up!), finally retiring after the 2001-02 season and moving into an assistant coach position with the Rays. He got the big bump up in '07-08, and has coached South Carolina to their first back-to-back 40-win seasons in a decade.

(Note--this will be the first of a recurring series :^))

Our man Tony gets sorted out

Former juniors announcer John Meissner sent a much more useful email to HNN than I did. Just to be clear, everyone knows now there is no USHL team in Dubuque.

What the next rush will entail

I've been somewhat dormant (given my recent trends at least)--quite a bit of fill-in work here at the station, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means I don't do as much with this as I'd like. Between this and family visits I won't get a lot of time with this for the next couple weeks, but for you regulars out there, here's what I've got in store:

• After some wrangling with CDs and DVDs, I'm going to FINALLY put up Blizzard-Admirals Game 3 from 2000, that was graciously passed along to me by Mike Holley (preview here).
• Inspired by our latest rumors, I'm going to try and get a hold of some more people involved in the last attempt to land a team at the BSSA. Emphasis there is on "try", but I'm a little more motivated as of late.
• Due to a lost bank card, my NewspaperArchive subscription has lapsed, which unfortunately means that until I can squeeze in a trip to Charleston, my work on the Tri-State League as a whole is a tick stalled. That being said, the Cabell County Library is still just a short jaunt downtown, and my next several trips there will be documenting the Huntington Stars. My wife keeps telling me I should write a book on this all, and if there is a book at this point it will be about the Tri-State League.

If I think of anything else I'll post it here. Just thought I'd let everyone know beforehand in case I can't update this too terribly often.

People I will not be speaking with anytime soon

Dan Battles, former Charleston hockey captain (and longtime skating instructor) died in 1986.
Bob McDonald, patron saint of Huntington ice hockey, died in 1995.
Luigi Narcise, would-be hockey investor, died in 2006.

I knew I had just missed Narcise, but I just found the others out today--I figured McDonald and Battles would be longshots at best, given their advanced age...

Picking up from yesterday

If the library had stayed open a few minutes longer I'da found my answer to the saga--Luigi Narcise, quoted in the 22 December 1959 Huntington Advertiser:

Andy (Mulligan, Toledo Mercurys GM) just waited too long and I'm going to tell him so."

Narcise and Arnold were open to hosting the March 1960 games, but as far as I can tell the Mercurys did not pick up the option. Huntington would next host a hockey game in 1966, as the NHL's impending expansion seemed certain to create an opening for Huntington. However, the games were not terribly well-attended, owing in large part to minimal promotion and one of the least inspiring lineups in the city's hockey history: back-to-back games with the top two teams in the OHA Major Intermediate A Hockey League, the Simcoe Gunners and the Port Colborne Sailors. The O is for Ontario, not Ohio--this would be the first and, as far as I can tell, only hockey game played in Huntington with no local interest whatsoever. Every other game before and since either featured a team from Huntington or someplace relatively close by.

BTW, in case anyone's wondering, Simcoe won both games, 5-4 on 23 April 1966 and 9-6 on the 24th.