Apologies for a LONG layoff

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

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

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

The strange people who comment here

Like one Mr. Shane Cartmill:

"Hi Lenny,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Packing up again

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

What will there be on here?

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

And you thought I'd forgotten about this all

I'd fallen off the ball about three stories, but I'm by no means done. Went back to the microfilm a couple weeks ago, been doing some odd websearches here and there and found that there is a corner of former governor Gaston Caperton's collection at the State Capitol about the Blizzard. Checked this out last week, and used it as an excuse to check out Southern Kitchen before it closed.

I noticed a mention of a Huntington Stars in a column of Ernie Salvatore's from my brief microfilm search; this inspired me to dig some more into that corner of things. I hit a goldmine--turns out THIS was the first hockey team in Huntington; the Aces was in fact the name of Huntington's entry in the Mountain State Baseball League. The Stars began play in 1938 at a place called Iceland--Huntington's first ice rink, and the second rink in the state (Charleston had the first, one year earlier). They played a handful of games for the 1938-39 season, primarily against a team from the Charleston rink, then ripped through a 1939-40 schedule against teams from Charleston, Toledo, Detroit, Atlantic City, and wrapped up the season against a team from New York City's Metropolitan Hockey League.

1940-41 promised to build on the previous season's success, and with the on-and-off-ice success of hockey in West Virginia, the general manager of Huntington and Charleston's teams formed a league in mid-season with a team in Akron, the Tri-State Hockey League. At some point in late January-early February, however, something happened; what isn't entirely clear from what I've seen, but the league had admitted a team from Toledo--the Babcocks--which was to begin playing the next week against Huntington and Charleston. However, all mentions of the TSHL abruptly end in the beginning of February. The final games of 1941 were played against Charleston, the Toledo Rovers, and the Detroit Racers, the latter two exhibition matches.

What happened I can only deduce from the ads in Huntington's papers first advertising discounted ticket prices--previously 75c for reserved seating, 50c for general admission, for the final two games it was 45c for all seats--and then advertising that at the end of the season Iceland would be closed for repairs and--big one--the installation of a wood floor. The venue, per city directories, was renamed Arena Gardens and, while operating year-round now, was converted into a roller rink. It would burn down a few years later (believed to be 1945, but unsure), and the site is currently occupied by a Fantastic Sam's.

And he's on it

Mark Williams in Thursday.

Getting back on the ball

I had been in contact with a fellow who claimed to have some contacts relating to an attempt to get another team back in town; he got in touch with me again last week and in the conversation asked for a copy of what I had thus far. I hadn't gotten to it Friday--was working the orientation table unexpectedly--but will on Monday, and will try and get some contacts.

I had a couple of inspirational moments; one was running into Alex Reed at the Union on my birthday and talking about the above fellow (who said his sources were looking at a 2008 debut)--after the discussion that followed re: my project I remarked "I wish I could be as into it sober as I am drunk!"

The other one I referenced earlier: last week I got a Detroit Vipers jersey off Ebay, and wore it for most of this past Monday. I was on break at work, in line at Starbucks behind a fellow and his mother, presumably in town for Marshall orientation. The guy turns around and remarks to his mom "hey, that's the hockey team here." I had to depressingly correct him and inform him that there hasn't been hockey here for 7 years. He was about as well-informed on the hockey situation here as I was when I came to town for orientation 5 years ago.

There's a market for this, I feel it in my gut. Between Marshall students and locals I really think there's a solid base to start from. It's just a matter of planting the right seeds, etc.

Jumpstarting

Various personal items, coupled with my usual inability to get restarted on a paused project, are the main culprit of the long gap between updates here. Essentially, I'm still not entirely sure which direction I want to go on this whole thing; I'm really not entirely sure if I want to do this as a radio project, and I'm thinking if I'm going in a broader direction with the research, I may as well go in a broader direction with the rest of the project--that is, make it much less Huntington-centric.

This is all stuff I'm going to have to take care of here once I can really get my head collected--which, as I know better than anyone, is easier said than done...

Long time, no type

Don't worry kids, I'm still here. Just been recovering from the end of formal schooling, and trying to recombobulate myself in the process. This, of course, includes this project.

WHERE I AM THUS FAR:

My focus, as I mentioned earlier, is going to be on the pitfalls of putting hockey (back) in Huntington. I realized that as many failed minor league franchises in various sports we have here, a better comparison might be made to similarly-sized markets that have (had) hockey. Thusly...

MY CRITERIA:

Simple really. Comparing to markets that are:
--south of the Mason-Dixon line,
--between 200k-200k in metro population, and
--have (had) a hockey team.

Which gives us several options of varying levels of success. The ones I've become most interested in:

--Asheville (UHL's Smoke 1998-2002, SPHL's Aces 2004-05; mentions of the Smoke on teh intarwebs have the team vanishing in an eponymous puff)
--Shreveport-Bossier City (CHL's Mudbugs, just celebrated 10 years on the ice)
--Beaumont, TX (ECHL's Texas Wildcatters 2003-present; also VERY notable because this franchise WAS the Huntington Blizzard!)
--Huntsville, AL (currently the SPHL's Havoc, most notably the Channel Cats in the CHL and SEHL. Huntsville might very well be Hockeytown South--in addition to the professional history, U-Alabama-Huntsville has a three-decade-plus old hockey program that is now at NCAA D-1 level!)
--Tallahassee (ECHL's Tiger Sharks 1994-2001)
--Roanoke (most notably the ECHL's Express 1993-2004, but has had hockey as far back as the late 1960s in the old EHL)
--Lafayette, LA (ECHL's Louisiana IceGators, one of great rise-and-fall stories in the annals of sports. Ice hockey thrived in the middle of the Bayou for the better part of a decade, but completely fell apart within a couple years. Hell, this might become a sideproject unto itself...)
--Waco, TX (yes, Waco, the Wizards in the old WPHL--another one that seems to have just vanished from the face of the earth)
--Prescott, AZ (CHL's Arizona Sundogs, their newest expansion team)
--Florence, SC (actually technically outside my range--they're UNDER 200,000 metro, had the Pee Dee Pride for several years in the ECHL, and just recently lost the Pee Dee Cyclones in the SPHL)

OTHER CITIES LOOKING AT:
--Winston-Salem: this is where the Cyclones landed. Before them, they had the Polar Twins; before that, the T-Birds; before that, the Parrots, the Icehawks, the Thunderbirds (spelled out), and--again--the Polar Twins. Seven teams in eight leagues in over thirty-five years.
--Pensacola: with the Ice Pilots, a similar situation to the aforementioned IceGators, the difference being that they're staying put for the time being.
--Anchorage: I printed off a good article on the Alaska Aces ownership--being way-the-hell-out there in the opposite direction, I figure this is a decent lead.
--Knoxville: well they're not really doing that badly, but in terms of franchise shifts and general experience they seem to have been in the same boat. That, and I found Jim Bermingham to be very knowledgeable on the subject.

Of course, any feedback on these will be immensely appreciated.

Change in direction

After a consultation with Dr. Bailey and station manager (and narrator!) Alex Reed, I have determined that I have OVERsucceeded. I did in fact cram the history of ice hockey in Huntington into a half-hour, and that half-hour is incredibly cluttered. Somehow, I did not anticipate this, even though this was essentially the desired effect; maybe it's just how my brain works.

Bailey summed it up this way: "You need to tell A story. You're telling twelve on here." In the ensuing brainstorm, Alex tossed up focusing on the pitfalls of getting another hockey team into Huntington, which resulted in a triumphant foot-stomp from me so loud it could be heard at the end of the hallway. I was already thinking in this direction--after my first script, Bailey's primary complaint was that it ended on too much of a downer, and really, the only non-down end I can think of to this tale is another team playing in Huntington.

So for the award effort, the historical element will be limited more to how things did and didn't work with the Hornets and Blizzard, and will also have input from people who were with the previous failed professional teams in football and baseball, as well as the Huntington Heroes (who have not failed as of yet). I'll try and keep speculative parts to a minimum--in 30 minutes, let's say 25 minutes of what is and 5 minutes of what should (never) be. But as far as a historical archive, that corner of the operation will take a rest for the time being.

I'm taking a much more collaborative approach to this, and will be doing much more brainstorming among the people here; in the same vein, I'm inviting you all to give some input as to the direction and shape this should take--who to talk with, angles to come from, things I missed or that didn't come up earlier, etc.