Already did both parts for Dr. Haptonstall and Jared Bednar. The remainder of my playlist looks like this:
Kelly Harper
Ray Edwards
Todd McCormick
Paul Pickard
Jim Bermingham
Don Hatfield
Mark Williams
Ernie Salvatore, part 1
David Walsh
Ernie Salvatore, part 2
17 July 2010
Interview transcript: Jared Bednar
(Since doing this interview, Jared Bednar's coaching career has taken off--shortly after this interview, he was bumped up to head coach in South Carolina, where he won a Kelly Cup in 2009. He followed that up with an assistant's role for the AHL's Abbotsford Heat, who made the playoffs their first year, and will be entering his first year as head coach of the Peoria Rivermen. As for Jim Bermingham and Ray Edwards--who get namedropped here--we'll get to them later...)
LENNY: ...okay! And we're actually recording now! All right, so, Mr. Bednar...
JARED BEDNAR: Yes!
LENNY: Okay, we are talking--we are talking Huntington Blizzard hockey, which you are one of--the only inaugural member to last more than I think, a season and a half.
JARED BEDNAR: (laughter) Yeah, I guess so! I believe we started out the second year there with a couple guys and ended up being the only guy making it through that year.
LENNY: Yes, you ended up--you were a part of that first season, fresh out of juniors...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah...
LENNY: Did you just try out there, or...?
JARED BEDNAR: I started out, I went to Greensboro actually, in the same league, to the Greensboro Generals, and then right before the regular season, I got released from Greensboro, and I wanna say there was three or four of us that came over from Greensboro to Huntington. Basically, the coaches talked during training camp, and Huntington was still looking for players, and the three or four of us went in and met the team, and basically stuck around from there.
LENNY: You were part of that first season, which I have been referring to as The Year From Hell...
JARED BEDNAR: (laughter) Yeah, it was different! I'm not sure that, everyone knew what to expect, I mean at that time the league was expanding, lots of new ownership groups coming in, and, it was definitely a learning experience. We weren't--we didn't do too well on the ice, we--it was fun, it's an interesting city, I really enjoyed my time there, that's for sure. But we didn't win a whole bunch of games there my first year, but after coming back for the second year, it was very--I found it very rewarding, I was able to-- not make the playoffs, I believe the first year there we won only like 14 games, and then the second year we jumped out to a quick start, had all different personnel, a new coach, and took off, got out of the gates really good, and ended up making the playoffs that year. So that was very rewarding after suffering through the first season.
LENNY: That first season you ultimately ended up with three different coaches: there was Bob Kelly to start the season...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah...
LENNY: ...they fired him in December...
JARED BEDNAR: ...right...
LENNY: ...and Destocki on the interim until they hired Paul Pickard...
JARED BEDNAR: ...Paul Pickard, correct...
LENNY: ...and I was just kinda wanting your take on the different coaching styles and such.
JARED BEDNAR: Well I think Bob was used to--although he had played many years pro, I wanna say that he had coached younger guys, like at the high school or prep hockey level--I'm not sure what his background was in coaching, I don't think he had coached pro hockey before, certainly at times I enjoyed playing for all of them. Like I said, we struggled--I think it was, it might have been a situation, knowing what I know now, that they probably got started late in their recruiting, and then, it was probably tough to find players at that time--the league wasn't as large and wasn't as popular. And then Bob took over--Destocki took over, for the interim, like you'd said, so that was brief, but he was part of the group that was running the team at the time, and certainly got to know him fairly well, and then when they hired Paul Pickard, basically we ended up going through a second training camp when they hired Paul. He brought in a lot of new players, made a lot of changes, I mean obviously we needed to. We weren't winning prior to that, basically gave everyone another chance to try out for the team, and a lot of moves were made, and it was a lot more structured under Paul, and then when he came back the second year we had a whole--a lot of new guys again, he recruited over the summertime, and we ended up having a really good team that second year. We tapered off in the second half, and I wanna say ended up losing to Dayton in the first round...
LENNY: Yeah, it was Dayton in four games in the first round... But yeah, '94 was a marked improvement, and then just massive upheaval in the offseason...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah...
LENNY: There was an ownership squabble, team got sold, coaching staff flipped over, and you ended up with Grant Sonier for coach for what ended up being your last half-season...
JARED BEDNAR: That was my last year, that would have been the third year of the team, Grant Sonier came in. Yeah, that was--funny, I had played in Huntington, and ended up going to play roller hockey that summer in Anaheim, CA, and Grant was the head coach out there for the roller hockey team, and then next thing you know he was behind the bench in Huntington. That was the year I actually got traded--Dan Fournel and I both got traded to South Carolina, and they--basically, we were in need of a goaltender, and that's what--they got a defenseman in Tom Menicci and a goaltender (Eric Raymond) for Dan Fournel and myself. We were roommates at the time, so it was-- that was my first time being traded as a pro, and I went through my first year wanting basically-- no one likes to lose, and when you start losing a lot of games, you're always thinking "well maybe I need a change", like I was wanting to possibly get out of Huntington my first year, to really enjoying myself and the guys and the town and the fans and everything the second year, and then my third year when I got traded to South Carolina I was crushed! I was devastated. I had met a girlfriend down in Huntington, and ended up being my wife--I met my wife in Huntington, and ended up getting married a few years later. I spent a few offseasons back in Huntington, and now we call Charleston, SC home.
LENNY: Yeah. You said that was the first time, as far as I can tell that was the last time you were traded as a hockey player I think...
JARED BEDNAR: (laughter)
LENNY: ...I mean, obviously you would know more about it then I would.
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah, I was--actually, that's probably right. I bounced around, like I had played on some teams at the American League level, and been released off 25-gamers (contracts) here and there, but at this level I got traded to, obviously, Charleston, South Carolina, and I'm still with the team down here--I had a couple stints away from the team in the International League and the American League, but I'm happy to still call Charleston home, and still in the hockey business, so, I mean, it's been good to me. Obviously Huntington was a big part of my career--it's where I started, and, you learn a lot from your seasons that you win, and you also learn a lot from the seasons that you don't win, and how to improve and stuff, so I can't take that away from, my career, and obviously--like I said, I met my wife, and have two beautiful children now, and I would have never met her if I wasn't stationed in Huntington at one point along the way!
LENNY: There was something on the tip of the tongue that I was going to ask, and I can't quite remember it now! I was wanting to kinda, bring all that sorta together to an extent. Although--you're assistant coach and vice president of hockey operations, which--I've never seen the assistant named the head of hockey operations before...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah. Well we got into a little bit of a--just a different situation where I was handling some of the business, as far as travel, and bills that were being paid, you know with the union, and just the rules that happen in this league... I don't know, I just slowly over the last few years started doing more and more on the business side, and wanted to add that title and a little bit more responsibility, and it just, as it worked out this year, I've been granted that title, and now obviously I've taken on some more responsibilities on the business side, but I still--I'm doing all the things I've been doing over the last few years as far as assistant coach. So I guess I have, two jobs, but at this level, the coach/general manager, every team sort of has--their coach has a different role, and some teams have assistants, some don't, some teams have a general manager and just a head coach, every team I think just finds a way--has a system that works for them, and it's been really good for us this year. I think the year's ran smoothly, and, obviously I'm excited about this position, it's part of the game I enjoy, the business side of it, but I like to be on the ice and coaching as well.
LENNY: I wasn't sure how into the business end you, yourself, would be, cause I was going to ask, you having been with in Charleston with the Stingrays franchise for the last--you've been there off and on for the last decade...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah...
LENNY: ...and just--again, with you kind of being a bit more on the behind-the-scenes side of things now, just--I guess basically having been in Huntington, and knowing the Huntington angle of things, and also the office kind of angle of things, I guess what would it--my question is all disjointed now... (I mangled the English language in this passage much more than I was willing to transcribe --LS)
JARED BEDNAR: ...right, no, I understand what--I think I know where you're going with this thing. I think over the years--are you asking, like what would it take to have a successful franchise?
LENNY: What would it take, and if you could apply what you've witnessed in your time in Huntington, what you've witnessed in your time in Charleston...
JARED BEDNAR: ...right...
LENNY: ...and I guess just compare and contrast, sort of.
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah. I think--the league is constantly evolving, and the league itself, not just the ownership groups but the league itself is constantly finding ways to help out, teams that are in need. I mean, I don't think it's a big secret that there's still--you know minor hockey, to have a team successful, both financially and on the ice, is--I think it takes a lot of hard work. It's not those days like we went through in Charleston when I first got traded here, they were an expansion team at the same time Huntington was an expansion--they both came into the league at the exact same time--and basically, I think the situation down here in Charleston, it was, they just put the team together, marketed a little bit, and next thing you know open the doors and 9,000 people came into the building! And over the years, our attendance numbers have dropped, and continued to drop all the way down, and lots of teams have gone out of business, obviously, in the meantime. I think we've done--this organization in Charleston's done a great job of, using all the resources we have with the league and other teams that have been successful in the league, and they do a much better job now sharing that with other ownership groups, and everyone's on the same page, I mean obviously with the economics of the league you need teams around you to be successful so you can continue to play them so you're not traveling too far, and just keep the costs down as far as that goes. You have-- all the divisions are structured geographically, make sure the travel--you have a lot less overnight travel now, and just all those sorts of expenses that can really add up and ruin your budget are now being thought of by the league and by the owners, and everyone's on the same page a lot more than they were, I think, back in the day when I was in Huntington. But I think, like--it's a struggle to make sure you can have return fans in the building and then also recruit new fans to the game, and, our office staff here in Charleston has gone from five or six, seven people over the recent years to now we have as many as 13 or 14 people in our front office working and selling tickets constantly, and that's the big thing. You have to have people in the building to be successful, and then, obviously you let your hockey department take care of the other side of winning hockey games.
LENNY: On that note, I guess anything else notable we haven't touched on? Anything you'd like to throw in the mix there, just to wrap up here?
JARED BEDNAR: I can't think of anything in general... I was sad to see the team leave Huntington, I know, with other teams in that area I think it would have been a good hockey market, I mean, I'm not sure--there's a lot of teams in our league that do really well for a few years and then find their way--find out that it's a little tougher to keep the business running than what they thought, I guess. But, obviously, like I said I enjoyed my time in Huntington, and I enjoyed playing there. I met a lot of good friends, some guys that I still talk to that are still in the business, like Jim Bermingham's running the team in Knoxville, in the Southern Professional Hockey League, and Ray Edwards, who was a coach there, and was with Huntington long after I was gone, is still a good friend of mine, and he's out in the Central League running a team, and-- you meet a lot of contacts along the way and see these guys, and you all move on, but the hockey world's still a small world...
LENNY: And on that note, I guess we'll wrap this up here!
JARED BEDNAR: Okay.
LENNY: I thank you very much for taking your time out there, coach--assistant coach/GM Bednar...
JARED BEDNAR: Thank you!
LENNY: ...and the phones seemed to be ringing off the hook there a little bit ago, earlier in the interview, I don't know if that was your phone...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah, that was my cellphone actually, a couple of the guys calling--I'll return those calls, they'll be fine.
LENNY: Yeah, I was about to say, I'll let you get back to that there...
LENNY: ...okay! And we're actually recording now! All right, so, Mr. Bednar...
JARED BEDNAR: Yes!
LENNY: Okay, we are talking--we are talking Huntington Blizzard hockey, which you are one of--the only inaugural member to last more than I think, a season and a half.
JARED BEDNAR: (laughter) Yeah, I guess so! I believe we started out the second year there with a couple guys and ended up being the only guy making it through that year.
LENNY: Yes, you ended up--you were a part of that first season, fresh out of juniors...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah...
LENNY: Did you just try out there, or...?
JARED BEDNAR: I started out, I went to Greensboro actually, in the same league, to the Greensboro Generals, and then right before the regular season, I got released from Greensboro, and I wanna say there was three or four of us that came over from Greensboro to Huntington. Basically, the coaches talked during training camp, and Huntington was still looking for players, and the three or four of us went in and met the team, and basically stuck around from there.
LENNY: You were part of that first season, which I have been referring to as The Year From Hell...
JARED BEDNAR: (laughter) Yeah, it was different! I'm not sure that, everyone knew what to expect, I mean at that time the league was expanding, lots of new ownership groups coming in, and, it was definitely a learning experience. We weren't--we didn't do too well on the ice, we--it was fun, it's an interesting city, I really enjoyed my time there, that's for sure. But we didn't win a whole bunch of games there my first year, but after coming back for the second year, it was very--I found it very rewarding, I was able to-- not make the playoffs, I believe the first year there we won only like 14 games, and then the second year we jumped out to a quick start, had all different personnel, a new coach, and took off, got out of the gates really good, and ended up making the playoffs that year. So that was very rewarding after suffering through the first season.
LENNY: That first season you ultimately ended up with three different coaches: there was Bob Kelly to start the season...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah...
LENNY: ...they fired him in December...
JARED BEDNAR: ...right...
LENNY: ...and Destocki on the interim until they hired Paul Pickard...
JARED BEDNAR: ...Paul Pickard, correct...
LENNY: ...and I was just kinda wanting your take on the different coaching styles and such.
JARED BEDNAR: Well I think Bob was used to--although he had played many years pro, I wanna say that he had coached younger guys, like at the high school or prep hockey level--I'm not sure what his background was in coaching, I don't think he had coached pro hockey before, certainly at times I enjoyed playing for all of them. Like I said, we struggled--I think it was, it might have been a situation, knowing what I know now, that they probably got started late in their recruiting, and then, it was probably tough to find players at that time--the league wasn't as large and wasn't as popular. And then Bob took over--Destocki took over, for the interim, like you'd said, so that was brief, but he was part of the group that was running the team at the time, and certainly got to know him fairly well, and then when they hired Paul Pickard, basically we ended up going through a second training camp when they hired Paul. He brought in a lot of new players, made a lot of changes, I mean obviously we needed to. We weren't winning prior to that, basically gave everyone another chance to try out for the team, and a lot of moves were made, and it was a lot more structured under Paul, and then when he came back the second year we had a whole--a lot of new guys again, he recruited over the summertime, and we ended up having a really good team that second year. We tapered off in the second half, and I wanna say ended up losing to Dayton in the first round...
LENNY: Yeah, it was Dayton in four games in the first round... But yeah, '94 was a marked improvement, and then just massive upheaval in the offseason...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah...
LENNY: There was an ownership squabble, team got sold, coaching staff flipped over, and you ended up with Grant Sonier for coach for what ended up being your last half-season...
JARED BEDNAR: That was my last year, that would have been the third year of the team, Grant Sonier came in. Yeah, that was--funny, I had played in Huntington, and ended up going to play roller hockey that summer in Anaheim, CA, and Grant was the head coach out there for the roller hockey team, and then next thing you know he was behind the bench in Huntington. That was the year I actually got traded--Dan Fournel and I both got traded to South Carolina, and they--basically, we were in need of a goaltender, and that's what--they got a defenseman in Tom Menicci and a goaltender (Eric Raymond) for Dan Fournel and myself. We were roommates at the time, so it was-- that was my first time being traded as a pro, and I went through my first year wanting basically-- no one likes to lose, and when you start losing a lot of games, you're always thinking "well maybe I need a change", like I was wanting to possibly get out of Huntington my first year, to really enjoying myself and the guys and the town and the fans and everything the second year, and then my third year when I got traded to South Carolina I was crushed! I was devastated. I had met a girlfriend down in Huntington, and ended up being my wife--I met my wife in Huntington, and ended up getting married a few years later. I spent a few offseasons back in Huntington, and now we call Charleston, SC home.
LENNY: Yeah. You said that was the first time, as far as I can tell that was the last time you were traded as a hockey player I think...
JARED BEDNAR: (laughter)
LENNY: ...I mean, obviously you would know more about it then I would.
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah, I was--actually, that's probably right. I bounced around, like I had played on some teams at the American League level, and been released off 25-gamers (contracts) here and there, but at this level I got traded to, obviously, Charleston, South Carolina, and I'm still with the team down here--I had a couple stints away from the team in the International League and the American League, but I'm happy to still call Charleston home, and still in the hockey business, so, I mean, it's been good to me. Obviously Huntington was a big part of my career--it's where I started, and, you learn a lot from your seasons that you win, and you also learn a lot from the seasons that you don't win, and how to improve and stuff, so I can't take that away from, my career, and obviously--like I said, I met my wife, and have two beautiful children now, and I would have never met her if I wasn't stationed in Huntington at one point along the way!
LENNY: There was something on the tip of the tongue that I was going to ask, and I can't quite remember it now! I was wanting to kinda, bring all that sorta together to an extent. Although--you're assistant coach and vice president of hockey operations, which--I've never seen the assistant named the head of hockey operations before...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah. Well we got into a little bit of a--just a different situation where I was handling some of the business, as far as travel, and bills that were being paid, you know with the union, and just the rules that happen in this league... I don't know, I just slowly over the last few years started doing more and more on the business side, and wanted to add that title and a little bit more responsibility, and it just, as it worked out this year, I've been granted that title, and now obviously I've taken on some more responsibilities on the business side, but I still--I'm doing all the things I've been doing over the last few years as far as assistant coach. So I guess I have, two jobs, but at this level, the coach/general manager, every team sort of has--their coach has a different role, and some teams have assistants, some don't, some teams have a general manager and just a head coach, every team I think just finds a way--has a system that works for them, and it's been really good for us this year. I think the year's ran smoothly, and, obviously I'm excited about this position, it's part of the game I enjoy, the business side of it, but I like to be on the ice and coaching as well.
LENNY: I wasn't sure how into the business end you, yourself, would be, cause I was going to ask, you having been with in Charleston with the Stingrays franchise for the last--you've been there off and on for the last decade...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah...
LENNY: ...and just--again, with you kind of being a bit more on the behind-the-scenes side of things now, just--I guess basically having been in Huntington, and knowing the Huntington angle of things, and also the office kind of angle of things, I guess what would it--my question is all disjointed now... (I mangled the English language in this passage much more than I was willing to transcribe --LS)
JARED BEDNAR: ...right, no, I understand what--I think I know where you're going with this thing. I think over the years--are you asking, like what would it take to have a successful franchise?
LENNY: What would it take, and if you could apply what you've witnessed in your time in Huntington, what you've witnessed in your time in Charleston...
JARED BEDNAR: ...right...
LENNY: ...and I guess just compare and contrast, sort of.
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah. I think--the league is constantly evolving, and the league itself, not just the ownership groups but the league itself is constantly finding ways to help out, teams that are in need. I mean, I don't think it's a big secret that there's still--you know minor hockey, to have a team successful, both financially and on the ice, is--I think it takes a lot of hard work. It's not those days like we went through in Charleston when I first got traded here, they were an expansion team at the same time Huntington was an expansion--they both came into the league at the exact same time--and basically, I think the situation down here in Charleston, it was, they just put the team together, marketed a little bit, and next thing you know open the doors and 9,000 people came into the building! And over the years, our attendance numbers have dropped, and continued to drop all the way down, and lots of teams have gone out of business, obviously, in the meantime. I think we've done--this organization in Charleston's done a great job of, using all the resources we have with the league and other teams that have been successful in the league, and they do a much better job now sharing that with other ownership groups, and everyone's on the same page, I mean obviously with the economics of the league you need teams around you to be successful so you can continue to play them so you're not traveling too far, and just keep the costs down as far as that goes. You have-- all the divisions are structured geographically, make sure the travel--you have a lot less overnight travel now, and just all those sorts of expenses that can really add up and ruin your budget are now being thought of by the league and by the owners, and everyone's on the same page a lot more than they were, I think, back in the day when I was in Huntington. But I think, like--it's a struggle to make sure you can have return fans in the building and then also recruit new fans to the game, and, our office staff here in Charleston has gone from five or six, seven people over the recent years to now we have as many as 13 or 14 people in our front office working and selling tickets constantly, and that's the big thing. You have to have people in the building to be successful, and then, obviously you let your hockey department take care of the other side of winning hockey games.
LENNY: On that note, I guess anything else notable we haven't touched on? Anything you'd like to throw in the mix there, just to wrap up here?
JARED BEDNAR: I can't think of anything in general... I was sad to see the team leave Huntington, I know, with other teams in that area I think it would have been a good hockey market, I mean, I'm not sure--there's a lot of teams in our league that do really well for a few years and then find their way--find out that it's a little tougher to keep the business running than what they thought, I guess. But, obviously, like I said I enjoyed my time in Huntington, and I enjoyed playing there. I met a lot of good friends, some guys that I still talk to that are still in the business, like Jim Bermingham's running the team in Knoxville, in the Southern Professional Hockey League, and Ray Edwards, who was a coach there, and was with Huntington long after I was gone, is still a good friend of mine, and he's out in the Central League running a team, and-- you meet a lot of contacts along the way and see these guys, and you all move on, but the hockey world's still a small world...
LENNY: And on that note, I guess we'll wrap this up here!
JARED BEDNAR: Okay.
LENNY: I thank you very much for taking your time out there, coach--assistant coach/GM Bednar...
JARED BEDNAR: Thank you!
LENNY: ...and the phones seemed to be ringing off the hook there a little bit ago, earlier in the interview, I don't know if that was your phone...
JARED BEDNAR: Yeah, that was my cellphone actually, a couple of the guys calling--I'll return those calls, they'll be fine.
LENNY: Yeah, I was about to say, I'll let you get back to that there...
12 July 2010
Some visual stimuli
Not everyone has Facebook, so I thought I'd repost on here some pictures I dug out from Huntington/Charleston's prehistory...
09 July 2010
Kids hockey camp at South Charleston Memorial
The Putnam Herald says that there will be a youth hockey camp at South Charleston starting next Monday for the next six Mondays for kids 4-13. Sponsored by the West Virginia Wild program, which won the McCarthy Cup tournament--way to go guys!
06 July 2010
Dunno how this may play into things
AJ Boleski will be out as manager of the Big Sandy Superstore Arena after July 23; he's been transferred over to the Intrust Bank Center in Wichita, mainly to be closer to family (AJ's originally from Kansas). Not sure how this will affect the chances to put hockey back in the BSSA, but I will certainly be keeping tabs on this development...
03 July 2010
Interview footage: Dr. Clark Haptonstall, Part 2
LENNY: ...a good bit better now. So we'll begin because--this actually kinda ties in quite nicely--half the reason I'm calling back is because I ended up--long story short I managed to not record the first half of the last interview.
DR. CLARK: Oh gosh.
L: Yeah. We were--I had one interview going into the next interview, and I just kept going--I just kept the thing running, so i didn't end up actually looking to check if it was even recording. So I missed the entire first interview I was doing, and then...
C: Oh boy.
L: ...yeah, I managed to make that up, and then i nudged the mouse later, and was like "wait a sec, that didn't record and of that! GYAHHH!" So the first half of that, the Hornets chunk, I ended up losing, but there were a couple of bits that--now that I've talked with some of the other people as well, Ernie Salvatore and Don Hatfield in particular, I was wanting to plug some of them into there, because one thing I had remembered from when we were talking the other day was you had mentioned how--the Fieldhouse basically being a gift from the local and state politicians, and Ernie had mentioned it basically being patterned after all the big sports "gardens" of the time, like Madison Square Garden, like Chicago Stadium, and stuff like that--were they really--was that basically their intent, they were going to give them the most state of the art arena they could find?
C: At the time, it definitely was, and they wanted--they were hoping that the arena would be a complete oval that would seat about 8,000 people. What they ended up having was a steel strike during the building of the arena, and what it did is it made prices really almost cost-prohibitive for steel, so they went from an 8,000 seat oval to about a 6500 seat horseshoe, and they made the seats a little bit smaller than they had wanted to in order to be able to reach that attendance number.
L: And then when the hockey team actually came in there, something that Hatfield had mentioned was they had essentially done a learn-the-game scrimmage, and I was just kinda--this kinda plugs in more to the Blizzard, but did they do anything like that when the Blizzard came into town? Anything to kinda get people acquainted to the sport?
C: Um, I don't remember so much a scrimmage that was designed for that purpose, but I do know that first year especially that they would go out of their way to explain hockey rules, whether it be in handouts or the game program or the PA announcer trying to explain what icing was or hooking.
L: There was something else--ah yes, I just remembered the other thing that came up when I was talking with Hatfield was attendance, which was--attendance wasn't that great, but I know they were basically--they spent the whole time they were there trying to compete with Marshall's basketball team, which at the time was fan-freakin-tastic. But Hatfield was mentioning that as the season progressed, they started to get more and more fans, and I was just--I guess a little something to tack onto that, if you could possibly...
C: When they first started the season, there was certainly a lot of confusion about hockey because it was just not a location that there was any hockey news, that hockey just hadn't made an impression in Huntington. So I think once people found that it was exciting, and that the team was pretty good, that it carried on, and attendance grew toward the latter half of the season.
L: From there I wanted to move on to slightly more present-type matters, and I was--one thing I had forgotten I was going to ask from last time was something I'd noticed from looking through things is there was kinda like this nice little curve--I'm not sure if nice is really the right word--but basically--I mean, the beginning of the decade you had the Huntington Cubs come up...
C: Mmhmm...
L: ...then you have the Blizzard come in, you have the Hawks, I think it was, the football team...
C: Right.
L: ...and that kinda like peaked at about mid-decade, then just--pretty much the same fashion, it just all kinda comes--everything just leaves all, not really at once, but in that kind of same downward slope. I mean, is there anything--I'm just kinda wondering, like, what factors were in there, I mean was it just Huntington's decline, or was it just the natural cycle of minor league existence...
C: That's something that is, even to this day, is frustrating to me, just because I've been involved with some of those projects, you know--I had worked at Marshall for a number of years, but I was also in on the ground floor at getting the Huntington Cubs, I worked there for the first three years of that organization. I saw the Huntington Blizzard. I was good friends with Bud Bickel, who ran the Huntington Hawks, and it seemed--it seems as if Huntington would support a minor league team for a few years, and then it's almost like flipping a switch. So it's--it was frustrating from my experiences with the Cubs to see a team do well and average over 2,000 people per game for the lowest level of minor league baseball, and then after a few years the--there's just not the committment there from Huntington, and I don't--I haven't been able to put my finger on why that would necessarily be the case.
L: It was something that confused me a little bit, because I'm thinking like on the one hand, Huntington--particularly on the jobs front--kinda declined around that time, but at the same time, there's--minor league teams, I don't have this as like a mathematical figure, but it seems like they only, on average, they'll stick around for about five years anyhow.
C: But it's--part of the frustration I experienced was why can't Huntington support a minor league baseball team when Bluefield, WV's had one for 70 years? You know, or Bristol, or Johnson City, TN--how come these towns that are much smaller than Huntington have had minor league baseball successfully for 70 years, and Huntington can't seem to keep a minor league team for more than five?
L: And the Johnstown Chiefs are still playing...
C: Right...
L: Another thing, something--as I kinda alluded to earlier, I was somewhat discombobulated in our previous interview, but I had asked what it would take to get another team successfully back here. You had mentioned that the first thing would be local ownership. I don't think I actually followed up on what it might take!
C: I think that it would take--it would definitely take local ownership and local investors. Each one of the minor league organizations, or most of the minor league organizations that we've talked about have included people who have come in from out of state. And I don't know if there's a lack of trust from Huntington consumers towards that ownership, or they feel that money that they're spending is perhaps leaving the area, but I think with local ownership there's a much better chance of succeeding. In sports, one of the things that makes teams successful is the personalities of the people who compete. And people often want to feel as if they know who the athletes are, and they feel that they can relate to them somehow. I think the same thing is true with ownership. I think if some of the most successful people in the Huntington market were able to combine their efforts, combine their investment, and bring in a minor league baseball team that had a successful stadium--for instance, if they had a shared stadium, shared baseball stadium that they shared with Marshall somewhere in the 3rd Avenue area, I think it could be, I won't say a goldmine, but it would be successful. I think they would have a very good chance to succeed. Marshall's been talking about building a baseball stadium for at least 20 years, so I don't know when that's going to happen, but for minor league baseball to succeed in Huntington there needs to be a new stadium and there needs to be local ownership. I mean, I try and think back to 1990 when I started working with the Huntington Cubs, and now that I think about how much fun that was, and how much Huntington rallied around that for a time, that it's very intriguing to think what a new stadium and what local ownership could do for a minor league baseball team in Huntington.
L: As far as the puck game--baseball, obviously, is a bit more natural to the area, baseball being baseball in general--how much more difficulty is there in that? Granted, there is that small base from when the Blizzard were still here, but...
C: I think with baseball, one of the things that made it nice in Huntington was the low cost of attending, where the cheapest ticket was $3.25. And also, it was during late June, July, and August, which were a time when no other Marshall sports were going on. So in that instance, short-season minor league baseball was a good fit. As for hockey, the thing that you would hope that you wouldn't compete--you would be competing with Marshall football and Marshall basketball with a hockey season. The thing that I have found in seeing minor league hockey--and I see this even here in Houston--is that people who are big fans of the hockey team don't necessarily cross over to other teams. There will be--if we're talking about the biggest fans, people that are fans of the Huntington Blizzard aren't necessarily the same people that are going to a Marshall basketball game or a Marshall football game. It almost seems to be a whole different section of the population.
L: That was actually something that came up in some of the earlier interviews is that they ended up getting a lot of the fanbase from outside Huntington--a lot of Ohio people, a lot of Kentucky people. One of my best friends is from Logan County, and her family would come out for Blizzard games.
C: Wow. Yeah, that's quite a committment, and what's interesting about that is Huntington--er, I mean Marshall hardly draws anything out of Ohio and Kentucky, so for people to come to see a minor league hockey game, that's a big committment in time, if nothing else.
L: Well, I've expended my mental reserve--anything else you'd like to tack on about hockey, attendance, minor league sports, anything in between?
C: Um--achoo!--sorry, I'm finishing up with the flu, I'm trying not to cough during my quotes.
L: It's quite all right, I actually had a call come in and the corresponding beeps were while you were talking, but it was in between words...
C: (laughter)
L: ...so it's quite all right.
C: No, I think you've done--I'm telling you, you've researched this well, and you've got--you talked to Hatfield and Salvatore, I'm sure that they did a nice job. When I wrote my article, I talked to Salvatore for a long time. He's pretty passionate about it, too, I bet he was an entertaining interview.
L: Oh, he was a great interview. Ernie was a great interview, I actually talked to him twice...
C: Yeah...
L: ...he was quite fun to talk to, I talked to some of the old Blizzard players, didn't actually talk to as many people as I was kinda hoping I was going to end up talking to, but at the same time I'm kinda wanting to turn this into--I'm basically wrapping up the graded project, I've spent half the time thinking about, like, how to go further from here...
C: Right, right...
L: ...do I want to do more about Huntington, do I want to do more about hockey, and, like, the general region--I had one idea to try and start writing a book about hockey in the South. It's always kinda intrigued me--being from Michigan it's always been an intriguing concept.
DR. CLARK: Oh gosh.
L: Yeah. We were--I had one interview going into the next interview, and I just kept going--I just kept the thing running, so i didn't end up actually looking to check if it was even recording. So I missed the entire first interview I was doing, and then...
C: Oh boy.
L: ...yeah, I managed to make that up, and then i nudged the mouse later, and was like "wait a sec, that didn't record and of that! GYAHHH!" So the first half of that, the Hornets chunk, I ended up losing, but there were a couple of bits that--now that I've talked with some of the other people as well, Ernie Salvatore and Don Hatfield in particular, I was wanting to plug some of them into there, because one thing I had remembered from when we were talking the other day was you had mentioned how--the Fieldhouse basically being a gift from the local and state politicians, and Ernie had mentioned it basically being patterned after all the big sports "gardens" of the time, like Madison Square Garden, like Chicago Stadium, and stuff like that--were they really--was that basically their intent, they were going to give them the most state of the art arena they could find?
C: At the time, it definitely was, and they wanted--they were hoping that the arena would be a complete oval that would seat about 8,000 people. What they ended up having was a steel strike during the building of the arena, and what it did is it made prices really almost cost-prohibitive for steel, so they went from an 8,000 seat oval to about a 6500 seat horseshoe, and they made the seats a little bit smaller than they had wanted to in order to be able to reach that attendance number.
L: And then when the hockey team actually came in there, something that Hatfield had mentioned was they had essentially done a learn-the-game scrimmage, and I was just kinda--this kinda plugs in more to the Blizzard, but did they do anything like that when the Blizzard came into town? Anything to kinda get people acquainted to the sport?
C: Um, I don't remember so much a scrimmage that was designed for that purpose, but I do know that first year especially that they would go out of their way to explain hockey rules, whether it be in handouts or the game program or the PA announcer trying to explain what icing was or hooking.
L: There was something else--ah yes, I just remembered the other thing that came up when I was talking with Hatfield was attendance, which was--attendance wasn't that great, but I know they were basically--they spent the whole time they were there trying to compete with Marshall's basketball team, which at the time was fan-freakin-tastic. But Hatfield was mentioning that as the season progressed, they started to get more and more fans, and I was just--I guess a little something to tack onto that, if you could possibly...
C: When they first started the season, there was certainly a lot of confusion about hockey because it was just not a location that there was any hockey news, that hockey just hadn't made an impression in Huntington. So I think once people found that it was exciting, and that the team was pretty good, that it carried on, and attendance grew toward the latter half of the season.
L: From there I wanted to move on to slightly more present-type matters, and I was--one thing I had forgotten I was going to ask from last time was something I'd noticed from looking through things is there was kinda like this nice little curve--I'm not sure if nice is really the right word--but basically--I mean, the beginning of the decade you had the Huntington Cubs come up...
C: Mmhmm...
L: ...then you have the Blizzard come in, you have the Hawks, I think it was, the football team...
C: Right.
L: ...and that kinda like peaked at about mid-decade, then just--pretty much the same fashion, it just all kinda comes--everything just leaves all, not really at once, but in that kind of same downward slope. I mean, is there anything--I'm just kinda wondering, like, what factors were in there, I mean was it just Huntington's decline, or was it just the natural cycle of minor league existence...
C: That's something that is, even to this day, is frustrating to me, just because I've been involved with some of those projects, you know--I had worked at Marshall for a number of years, but I was also in on the ground floor at getting the Huntington Cubs, I worked there for the first three years of that organization. I saw the Huntington Blizzard. I was good friends with Bud Bickel, who ran the Huntington Hawks, and it seemed--it seems as if Huntington would support a minor league team for a few years, and then it's almost like flipping a switch. So it's--it was frustrating from my experiences with the Cubs to see a team do well and average over 2,000 people per game for the lowest level of minor league baseball, and then after a few years the--there's just not the committment there from Huntington, and I don't--I haven't been able to put my finger on why that would necessarily be the case.
L: It was something that confused me a little bit, because I'm thinking like on the one hand, Huntington--particularly on the jobs front--kinda declined around that time, but at the same time, there's--minor league teams, I don't have this as like a mathematical figure, but it seems like they only, on average, they'll stick around for about five years anyhow.
C: But it's--part of the frustration I experienced was why can't Huntington support a minor league baseball team when Bluefield, WV's had one for 70 years? You know, or Bristol, or Johnson City, TN--how come these towns that are much smaller than Huntington have had minor league baseball successfully for 70 years, and Huntington can't seem to keep a minor league team for more than five?
L: And the Johnstown Chiefs are still playing...
C: Right...
L: Another thing, something--as I kinda alluded to earlier, I was somewhat discombobulated in our previous interview, but I had asked what it would take to get another team successfully back here. You had mentioned that the first thing would be local ownership. I don't think I actually followed up on what it might take!
C: I think that it would take--it would definitely take local ownership and local investors. Each one of the minor league organizations, or most of the minor league organizations that we've talked about have included people who have come in from out of state. And I don't know if there's a lack of trust from Huntington consumers towards that ownership, or they feel that money that they're spending is perhaps leaving the area, but I think with local ownership there's a much better chance of succeeding. In sports, one of the things that makes teams successful is the personalities of the people who compete. And people often want to feel as if they know who the athletes are, and they feel that they can relate to them somehow. I think the same thing is true with ownership. I think if some of the most successful people in the Huntington market were able to combine their efforts, combine their investment, and bring in a minor league baseball team that had a successful stadium--for instance, if they had a shared stadium, shared baseball stadium that they shared with Marshall somewhere in the 3rd Avenue area, I think it could be, I won't say a goldmine, but it would be successful. I think they would have a very good chance to succeed. Marshall's been talking about building a baseball stadium for at least 20 years, so I don't know when that's going to happen, but for minor league baseball to succeed in Huntington there needs to be a new stadium and there needs to be local ownership. I mean, I try and think back to 1990 when I started working with the Huntington Cubs, and now that I think about how much fun that was, and how much Huntington rallied around that for a time, that it's very intriguing to think what a new stadium and what local ownership could do for a minor league baseball team in Huntington.
L: As far as the puck game--baseball, obviously, is a bit more natural to the area, baseball being baseball in general--how much more difficulty is there in that? Granted, there is that small base from when the Blizzard were still here, but...
C: I think with baseball, one of the things that made it nice in Huntington was the low cost of attending, where the cheapest ticket was $3.25. And also, it was during late June, July, and August, which were a time when no other Marshall sports were going on. So in that instance, short-season minor league baseball was a good fit. As for hockey, the thing that you would hope that you wouldn't compete--you would be competing with Marshall football and Marshall basketball with a hockey season. The thing that I have found in seeing minor league hockey--and I see this even here in Houston--is that people who are big fans of the hockey team don't necessarily cross over to other teams. There will be--if we're talking about the biggest fans, people that are fans of the Huntington Blizzard aren't necessarily the same people that are going to a Marshall basketball game or a Marshall football game. It almost seems to be a whole different section of the population.
L: That was actually something that came up in some of the earlier interviews is that they ended up getting a lot of the fanbase from outside Huntington--a lot of Ohio people, a lot of Kentucky people. One of my best friends is from Logan County, and her family would come out for Blizzard games.
C: Wow. Yeah, that's quite a committment, and what's interesting about that is Huntington--er, I mean Marshall hardly draws anything out of Ohio and Kentucky, so for people to come to see a minor league hockey game, that's a big committment in time, if nothing else.
L: Well, I've expended my mental reserve--anything else you'd like to tack on about hockey, attendance, minor league sports, anything in between?
C: Um--achoo!--sorry, I'm finishing up with the flu, I'm trying not to cough during my quotes.
L: It's quite all right, I actually had a call come in and the corresponding beeps were while you were talking, but it was in between words...
C: (laughter)
L: ...so it's quite all right.
C: No, I think you've done--I'm telling you, you've researched this well, and you've got--you talked to Hatfield and Salvatore, I'm sure that they did a nice job. When I wrote my article, I talked to Salvatore for a long time. He's pretty passionate about it, too, I bet he was an entertaining interview.
L: Oh, he was a great interview. Ernie was a great interview, I actually talked to him twice...
C: Yeah...
L: ...he was quite fun to talk to, I talked to some of the old Blizzard players, didn't actually talk to as many people as I was kinda hoping I was going to end up talking to, but at the same time I'm kinda wanting to turn this into--I'm basically wrapping up the graded project, I've spent half the time thinking about, like, how to go further from here...
C: Right, right...
L: ...do I want to do more about Huntington, do I want to do more about hockey, and, like, the general region--I had one idea to try and start writing a book about hockey in the South. It's always kinda intrigued me--being from Michigan it's always been an intriguing concept.
02 July 2010
Interview footage: Dr. Clark Haptonstall, Part 1
I'm going shortest to longest for the sake of my sanity--that, and because I can end with the incredible honor of talking with Ernie Salvatore while beginning with my humiliating first recorded interview. I say humiliating because I realized part-way through the interview, I had not actually started recording--which means that I also did not record a wonderful roundtable discussion with former Marshall club player and WMUL Kicksave host Todd McCormick and Herald-Dispatch writer David Walsh.
I would get them re-interviewed later on, and would get a second session with Dr. Clark Haptonstall, who, as a grad student at Marshall, wrote a piece on the Huntington Hornets that ended up making its way into an issue of the West Virginia historical magazine Goldenseal in winter 1993. He would later become sports information director at Marshall; in 2003 became a professor in sports management at Rice University in Houston, and in 2005 added a Ph.D from Florida State to his title. While my frustration over having missed a significant chunk of relevant material caused me to miss Dr. Haptonstall calling Huntington "Houston", I was lucky enough to have caught the recording right before one of the more interesting finds in my research, which is where we begin...
DR. HAPTONSTALL: ...so anybody who wanted to own a minor league, or wanted to own a professional team, often the East Coast Hockey League was where they looked, because the franchise fees at the time were very low. I used to, when I was in college, this would have been about 1990, I also worked for the Huntington Cubs, which was a professional baseball team in town. And our owner was from New York, and had the idea of bringing in professional hockey to (Huntington) 'cause he thought it would just make perfect sense, that way the same staff could work year-round, you know, summer doing professional baseball, the rest of the year doing professional hockey. And he had made some exploratory calls, but what he ended up finding was the franchise fee with the East Coast Hockey League, because it had become so popular so quick, had gone from $20,000 to $100,000. And that kinda got a little bit out of--the price tag was just a little bit too high at that point, and it only went higher from there. So there was some early, early talks, in fact he went down to the Fieldhouse to try and explore that, having never been in there. And we first walked in there--I was with him--and he was like "oh my God, this building is perfect for it!" With the seats pushed back, the rink would fit perfectly in the lower level, that way there would be close to 4,000 seats up top. It would make it a tough ticket to purchase, it would make it kind of a tight atmosphere, a loud atmosphere, a historic atmosphere, but it was--the problem was, at that point, they had had a lot of problems with the pipes for making ice, so they went ahead and cemented over everything. So if you were to move into the Fieldhouse, you would have to almost start from scratch, dig a huge hole in the dirt, in the basement there, and put the pipes in fresh. Either that, or go with a temporary ice surface. But other than that, that was the only thing I had heard of, and that was--to call that a serious attempt at bringing hockey to town would be a stretch.
LENNY: So that was it, until a couple years later when the thought was to put it in the Civic Arena...
CLARK: That's right.
LENNY: ...and that ran into relatively formidable opposition, just from having to install an ice rink there that had never been there before.
CLARK: Yeah. And--I'm trying to recall now--they went with a temporary ice surface, and a lot of the discussion was, when you went into the Civic Arena at the time, was, well, who's going to pay for it, and then who's making money off of the parking, who's making money off of the concessions, and for the Civic Arena, which really was kind of a stagnant building and didn't have a lot of events in there, to have something go in where they needed all of these dates, it was something that they were certainly not accustomed to. And so there was a lot of hesitancy about bringing a team in from really an ownership group that was out of state.
LENNY: Yeah, I forget which City Council member actually went as far as to refer to it as a "scam"...
CLARK: (laughter)
LENNY: ...I don't--again, I don't have that paper with me right now in this little cubicle here...
CLARK: Nice.
LENNY: ...but that ultimately passed, and they dropped the team in for '93-'94...
CLARK: Yeah.
LENNY: I'm trying to think of where to go, particularly on this one--I just actually had a conversation with a few people on the Blizzard, touched on quite a few points on the ups and downs of it, including--one thing in particular I was wanting to touch with you on was just kinda the difficulties of keeping--of having, and maintaining, and keeping from relocating/folding up a hockey team, or a professional sports franchise in general, in Huntington...
CLARK: Mmhmm...
LENNY: ...and particularly some of the difficulties that the Blizzard had--for most of its existence it was pretty much year to year.
CLARK: Right. It's almost--and I say this as a Huntington native, very proud of my hometown, but it's really almost embarassing the fact that Huntington can't keep a minor league team of any kind. I've had some association with a few of them, one of them being the Huntington Cubs, a little bit with the Huntington Blizzard in terms of seeing them come through, but I think a lot of what has happened in (Huntington) is the people of Huntington are so used to Marshall University, and all of the connections that they have with that institution and those teams, that they have a hard time kind of engaging something new, meaning they have a hard time becoming part of a fan base for something where it's not consistent, where players come in and leave--they're here for a year, they're here for half a year, so it's as if they don't learn about the new players and the new team.
LENNY: As far as--we haven't had a hockey team in this town for quite a few years, there's been at least one attempt to drop one back in, it did not go very far of course, but what do you think it would take? I mean, what do you think are some things that would be needed for such a franchise to actually--at least last as long as the Blizzard did on a slightly less than year-to-year basis...
CLARK: Right...
LENNY: ...or a more than year-to-year basis, I guess.
CLARK: I think the first thing you would have to have for that market would be a local ownership group, where it's not looked at as if someone is invading the Huntington area and bringing a team in, but rather it's a commitment from local ownership to have a team. There's nobody from the Huntington area that is going to be good enough to play at a professional level, so it's not that you can't have--"well, at least we have a couple of Huntington kids on the team", so that's not going to be the case. But it almost needs to be someone who is committed to Huntington, someone who is committed to the area to see it through, where they have--where it's a priority to see it succeed.
LENNY: Okay... Trying to think of a follow-up on that one... I'm having a little bit of a brain hiccup, and the heaters going in the studio aren't helping me any here...
CLARK: No problem! Go ahead, take your time, go through your notes, whatever you need...
LENNY: I think--that was pretty much it, unless you had anything else you wanted to add as far as the situation and all.
CLARK: I was kinda curious, because you know I haven't lived there since the year 2000, I'm curious what you heard about--of a team coming in there since the Blizzard...
LENNY: Okay...
CLARK: ...you said it didn't go far, but I hadn't heard anything.
LENNY: Yeah, when--I've only been here since 2002. I think 2003 or 2004, one of the old Blizzard executives, Mark Edwards, who's now I believe head of marketing with the Fieldhouse, had looked into an attempt to put a team in the--at that time it was the Atlantic Coast Hockey League...
CLARK: Okay...
LENNY: in Huntington. They had teams in Knoxville and... a few of the other smaller East Coast League markets back when the Blizzard were still in town. In fact Jim Bermingham actually coaches in Knoxville now for that franchise.
CLARK: Oh, you're kidding!
LENNY: But it was--from what I had read, and I need to--eventually I was going to get around to interviewing Mark Edwards as well--no, it was Mark Williams, rather. But it basically--I guess the big stumbling block from what I had read was the lack of available, good dates in the Civic Arena...
CLARK: Yeah...
LENNY: ...and so that ended up falling apart, and I had read one bit--which I'll need to ask him about as well, where he had tried to put one into like a junior league, and that league just collapsed upon itself...
CLARK: (laughter)
LENNY: Dead due to ridiculously bad management. I was--I remember looking at bits on this league on message boards, and it seemed to be a league that only existed on message boards...
CLARK: (more laughter)
LENNY: ...from all the things I had been reading.
CLARK: Yeah. Oh gosh...
LENNY: But elsewise it's just been arena football.
CLARK: Okay. And there seems to be a lot of variation in that from what I've seen.
LENNY: Yeah, well if I remember correctly the Arena League has patented arena football, so everybody else just has to kind of tinker with it one way or another to keep from getting sued.
CLARK: (laughter) Yep...
LENNY: But elsewise, as far as what I have on here, that's all she wrote!
CLARK: Okay.
LENNY: I thank you very very much. I'd shake your hand if I could reach that far...
"The IIHL and the Hurricanes were brought to me by league founder Mike (can't remember last name). It was apparent after a little research that the league was not viable. I was actually looking for something to help the then operating Tri State Ice Arena. It was struggling and needed to increase revenue outside of public and private skating."
The name was Killbreath, BTW. I did talk to Williams in-studio, and that will be transcribed in due time.
01 July 2010
Making good
Waaaaay back when I started on this, one of the things I wanted to do was put up interview transcripts and similar goodies. Unfortunately, those plans fell by the wayside--until now. Today I found the discs with the interview chunks on them, and I am FINALLY going to start transcribing those for you guys to read.
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