Less sleepy now (part 1)

Replied to a comment yesterday about the prospects for another team landing here:

"Not a lot. In '03-04 there was an effort to get a team back in the arena in the SEHL/SPHL, but the arena GM at the time wasn't very receptive to the idea. As recently as last year though the current GM proposed refurbishing the arena with, among other things, new hockey boards and equipment; however, being a municipal facility, this would require city money, and the city is a bit on the cash-strapped side. Still, I think if the right people got their heads together... well I'll elaborate a bit more tomorrow, when I'm less sleepy"

So I'm less sleepy now. The big problem right now is that I have no idea who would take on the role of putting together such an operation. That aforementioned (actually ACHL) effort was mainly spearheaded by Mark Williams, the Blizzard's old VP of marketing, had some relatively high-dollar people in talks (quite a few people namedropped local attorney Buck Crews), and the endorsement of old Blizzard guy Jim Bermingham, who went to Knoxville after Huntington folded up and became the IceBears' coach. Again, this fell through to a great extent because of resistance from the arena then-management.

Since that time there have been, in my opinion, two significant developments, one positive and one negative. The positive one, first, is the hiring of AJ Boleski as general manager, who has stated a willingness to put money toward fixing up the old hockey equipment--as the H-D's David Walsh had told me, "he's open to just about anything". Then there's the rise and fall of the Huntington Heroes indoor football franchise, which was poorly promoted, had trouble paying its bills in a good season, and then suffered through a nightmare 2008 season in which they went through two owners, went 5-1 in their first six and then won one game the rest of the season when much of the team quit due to lack of payment!

More to come later--this is a LONG tangent I'm going on here.

Scoreboard, 22 September 2008

Time spent: 1h45
Time dug through: November-December 1938
Scores found: 1
Potential interviews: maybe if I had a time machine
Thoughts: the two best sportswriters of the 20th century, Duke Ridgeley and Ernie Salvatore, both had an affinity for hockey, and as such they have become indispensable resources in print and (Ernie anyway--Duke's been dead quite some time) in person. I'd like to not have to rely so much on one newspaper in an era when there were two newspapers to work with, but the old Herald-Dispatch seems to be the paper of record for the old Stars.

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...