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...

Yes, I called Mark Williams "Mark Edwards". If you're reading this, I deeply apologize--as was stated earlier, I was not having the best of days. I did send him an email a while back asking about that last team--the Tri-State Hurricanes, who were to play in the International Independent Hockey League, one of those glorious rec-rink-A leagues that crashed and burned heavily:

"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.

Our map

One of the towns that I figured would potentially play a role in where a prospective Huntington franchise--Evansville--will end up in the I/CHL now. Surprisingly, this is effective this season, as opposed to upon the completion of their new arena in 2011, which means for the 2010-11 season the Icemen will still play in the miniscule Swonder Ice Arena.

Evansville I always figured was a key point because it's just a 5 hour drive west on I-64 from Huntington. If you could line up Evansville, Huntington, Lexington, and Louisville, that would be a fantastic road swing--perhaps a southeast division in the USHL, a northern leg of the SPHL, or some extra meat on the CHL's new northern division (aka the old IHL).

Other cities that I think would make great travel partners with a hypothetical Huntington franchise:

• Roanoke, VA: former Southern hockey hotbed, currently host to a number of collegiate club teams since the last minor league effort, the old Roanoke Valley Vipers in the UHL
• Richmond, VA: last hosted the SPHL's Renegades; they're considering a replacement for the old Coliseum
• Dayton/Troy, OH: I include Dayton and Troy because A--both cities at different times were rivals to Huntington, B--both cities are fairly close to each other, and C--I think both cities could be available. Dayton has been shaky in the last few years, with the Bombers bombing and with the Gems struggling; meanwhile Troy seems to be the best-run franchise in Barry Soskin's NJHL
• Cincinnati, OH: while the ECHL's Cyclones play downtown in US Bank Arena, I don't think Huntington is a good fit at present for the ECHL. However, the Cincinnati Gardens are vacant, and Cincinnati was able to sustain two hockey teams (the Cyclones and the AHL's Mighty Ducks) from 1997-2004. I don't see that being too feasible unless the Gardens team is in juniors.
• Indianapolis, IN: if Huntington ends up in the USHL, they would probably--barring other expansion--be in a division with the Ice, as well as...
• Youngstown, OH: the Phantoms.
• Wheeling, WV: currently still hosting the ECHL's Nailers; there has been much mumbling over the last few years about dissatisfaction with the Brooks Brothers, who own the team, and WesBanco Arena. They're playing a few games next season in...
• Johnstown, PA: who just lost the ECHL's last original team, the Chiefs, to Greenville, SC. I see any future movement with Wheeling bringing Johnstown with them, or vice versa.
• Pikeville, KY: this is really just a pipe dream on my end, and probably a bad idea given that it would potentially suck some fans away in Eastern Kentucky and Southern WV that would otherwise go to Huntington. That said, it would be a pretty kick-ass rivalry I think. Kinda like...
• Charleston, WV: if only the Civic Center had an ice plant, or...
• South Charleston, WV: had a few thousand more seats!

Any others you guys think I missed? (And while I'm at it, what do you think of the new look?)

All I know is that we will not be the Ice Bats

I'd been meaning to put something like this up for a while, but a commenter inspired me--off the top of my head there is no way a prospective Huntington team ends up in the following leagues:

• NHL (too big)
• both CHLs (Central and Canadian (and yes, the Canadian Major Junior system has several teams in America)), and the NAHL (all too distant)
• the AAHL (too distant, too small, and too unstable anyway)
  

So who does that leave? Well let's handicap the ones I've actually heard about:

UNITED STATES HOCKEY LEAGUE

Pros: One of the closest in proximity to Huntington, with a team in Youngstown and rumored expansion in the past to Louisville and Evansville. A big plus--as evidenced by the addition of the Muskegon Lumberjacks to the league's ranks next season--is a much better business model for smaller markets than the existing minor leagues, helped along by a shorter schedule and the fact that it's a strictly amateur league--there are no salaries in the USHL. Despite this, the quality of play in the USHL has grown significantly in the last decade, with the number of NHL draftees with experience in the league now rivaling the established Major Junior leagues.

Cons: Being a junior league may turn off some, particularly those who feel that amateur hockey would provide an inferior product. In addition, while there has been recent eastward expansion, the core of the league is still in the Central Time Zone--presently half the league resides in either Iowa or Nebraska!

SOUTHERN PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE

Pros: Until recently, this had a similarly favorable geographic footprint, with teams in Richmond and Winston-Salem, and Roanoke has been on the shortlist of expansion candidates. While a minor-pro league, the costs have been kept down significantly compared to other leagues, and the SPHL is seen as a model for "A" level minor league hockey. An attempt had been made to enter a predecessor league in 2003-04, with former Blizzard captain Jim Bermingham--then head coach for their team in Knoxville--acting as an ambassador of sorts between investors and the league.

Cons: Again, this had a favorable footprint; however, the league simultaneously lost Richmond and Winston-Salem and gained teams in Louisiana and Mississippi, further solidifying the southernness of the league. As it stands the closest travel partner to Huntington would be Knoxville--though this may not be as major of a problem; when the aforementioned Richmond franchise started play, the league stretched all the way down to Jacksonville!

INTERNATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE

Pros: Geography helps somewhat in this league, in particular after they picked up Dayton this past offseason. Huntington had a team in the old IHL, of course, and while the current league is slightly farther westward than the 1950s-era IHL, the current footprint is still manageable. As I had mentioned not too long ago, at least one person had expressed interest in a Huntington franchise in the IHL, and thought I was apparently the most knowledgeable person about it--I'm flattered, really...

Cons: By all accounts the league is being propped up by the management of the Fort Wayne Komets; it has been plagued with instability going back to its days as the United Hockey League, and a rebranding and shedding of farther-flung teams (at one point the UHL had teams in suburban St. Louis, Binghamton, NY, and Asheville, NC!) has only served to put lipstick on the pig. The league has lost four markets to other leagues in the last three years (a fifth, the Quad Cities, left, then returned after a fiasco in the AHL), and their efforts in Dayton have been ridiculous at best.

EAST COAST HOCKEY LEAGUE ECHL

Pros: C'mon, you guys remember the ECHL! Much of the North Division remains the same or only moderately shifted, with Wheeling, Toledo, and (for another few weeks anyway) Johnstown bolstered by Cincinnati, Kalamazoo, Trenton, NJ, Reading, PA, and Elmira, NY. While the league has a western division stretching all the way up and down the Pacific Coast from Southern California to Alaska, there is no regular season cross-conference play, so it really doesn't factor in until the playoffs roll around.

Cons: Johnstown is leaving, and Wheeling has been rumored on the chopping block for a few years now. More significantly, though, is the fact that the ECHL has so far shown little, if any, interest in moving back to Huntington.

AMERICAN HOCKEY LEAGUE

Pros: I'm not stutter-typing, there has to my knowledge been at least one inquiry into putting an AHL franchise in little old Huntington! It would reunite the area with old ECHL rivals Hampton Roads Norfolk and Charlotte, coming into the league next season, as well as some decent road trips to Cleveland and Wilkes-Barre.

Cons: There is no way Huntington could sustain a team in the AHL. Period. If the BSSA sold out every night, the costs of maintaining this caliber of team would simply overwhelm the franchise in a 30-some-year-old 5000-seat arena with no boxes or any such revenue generating amenities.

FEDERAL HOCKEY LEAGUE

Pros: Closer than the AAHL, and they're looking at Johnstown, which suggests that they might be shooting a tick higher than mere "rec-rink A" minor league hockey.

Cons: I'm VERY wary--this is the fourth different league in pretty much the same footprint in four years, with few actual differences. They're courting Mr. Soskin as well (or is it the other way around), and they've run into trouble regarding a pilfered logo. Not a good start...

While we celebrate our hopes, a moment of silence...

...Johnstown is apparently set to lose the Chiefs to Greenville, SC. While I have a soft spot for Southern hockey fans--and Greenville had a good run with the Grrrowl (am I getting the number of r's correct there?)--Johnstown is the last original franchise still in its original city in the ECHL. This has potential ramifications down and across the state line in Wheeling, which for geographic and economic reasons is seemingly always paired with Johnstown when relocation/franchise fold rumors pop up...

No news on the home front...

...but Wheeling will still have a team.

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 :^))

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.

An amusing exchange

Lost in my (relatively) dormant stretch in the last year or so was an article in the Reading Eagle on the five worst teams in ECHL history. Who was #1?

1. 1993-94 Huntington Blizzard (14-49-5)

Pro hockey returned to hard-scrabble Huntington, W.Va., in 1993 after a 40-year absence. The Blizzard had numerous ups and downs in their seven seasons, but were never so low as that inaugural year.

They still hold the ECHL marks for most goals allowed, 6.07 per game and 413 total, and their 14 wins are tied with the aforementioned Roanoke Valley and Greenville teams for fewest ever.

The Blizzard were also on the short end of two of the three worst whippings in league annals, a 15-0 loss to Greensboro and a 16-3 loss at Nashville on Super Bowl Sunday in which goalie Jim Mill played all 60 minutes.

This team, which once gave up 67 shots in a game against South Carolina, also had a 16-game winless streak, a league-record 12-game home winless streak, is second-worst all-time with just 33 points and is tied for the third-worst winning percentage at .243.

The Blizzard had three coaches that year, including former NHL player Bob "Battleship" Kelly, who was fired after a 5-14-2 start. Defenseman Jared Bednar finished with a plus-minus rating of minus-82.

What gives the Blizzard the slight edge over the 2003-04 Grrrowl and the 1992-93 Rampage, however, was that they lost four of seven games to a horrid Louisville (16-44-8) team.

The Blizzard bounced back to make the playoffs the following season. They stuck around until 2000, and there's a small movement online to bring them back.

O RLY?

Howdy,

Found your article from December on the 5 worst teams in ECHL history--certainly can't argue with the findings. I'd also like to add that the '93-94 Blizzard's top scorer (or at least he was at that point) quit the team... in the middle of a game.

I was most curious, though, about the comment at the end about the "small movement online" to bring a team back; I have a webpage up on hockey in Huntington from some work I did in college at Marshall and was wondering if you knew more (or if in fact you just managed to stumble upon my humble webpage--huntingtonhockey.blogspot.com). If it's not a movement of me, myself, and the voices in my head, I'd like to get a hold of them...

His reply:

Yeah, I stumbled onto your blog and dubbed it a small movement. I guess the movement is even smaller than I realized!

In related news, I might put a guestbook up...

Attendance recap: 1994-95

Average (regular season): 3747/game

Average including playoffs: 3677/game
--Huntington's two playoff games were on a Tuesday and Wednesday, which not surprisingly depressed attendance a bit

Monday games were surprisingly well-attended, averaging 4096/game; granted, one of these four games was the day after Christmas, while another was a special event for schoolkids (noon start, kids got a hockey game, a lecture on education from coach Paul Pickard, and a field trip for $4).

At this point Blizzard attendance had stabilized; there were only three games over 5000 fans in '94-95, yet their overall attendance inched slightly upward. Through 68 regular season games, the Blizzard's average attendance was 3743/game, which if they were competing in the ECHL today would only be about 500 off the league average, but then we're comparing the ECHL at its height (94-95 avg. 5315/game) to the ECHL in decline (4217/game). Still, things were looking promising by the end of that season....

Progress report on that attendance thing

Going one month at a time due to my terrible motion sickness while dealing with microfilm (even Dramamine doesn't help all that much), almost done with the Blizzard's first season. Interesting bits:

--Because of their unusual alignment their first season, they played Huntsville and Birmingham, AL more often than they played against in-state rivals Wheeling
--Of the teams they played more than once (so far), they drew 4263 avg. against Birmingham, 4193 against Louisville, and 3891 against Dayton
--As would be expected, weekend dates are more lucrative; through 26 home dates they averaged 4389 fans on 12 Friday/Saturday games, against only 3177 fans/game the rest of the week
--Four games drew over 5000 fans--two on Friday, two on Saturday. Five games drew less than half-capacity (<2800)--two on Sunday, two on Wednesday (the H-D devoted a couple articles to the idea that the Blizzard wouldn't do well on church days), and one on Tuesday

I should have the whole 1993-94 breakdown for you guys tomorrow.

A moment of silence

The Dayton Bombers have suspended operations. There's going to be quite a bit of upheaval in minor league (and possibly major league) hockey in the next few months. Hopefully some of our neighbors and old rivals (Wheeling and Johnstown in particular) can keep things rolling next season...

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.

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...