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...

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!

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...

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.

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.

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.

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?)

Reading between the lines

Wedged in the agenda for last week's City Council meeting was this little item:

1st Reading of an Ordinance re: AN ORDINANCE OF COUNCIL AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO ENTER INTO A CONTRACT WITH ROSS, SINCLAIR & ASSOCIATES, LLC

Looking at their website, the firm of Ross, Sinclaire, and Associates specialize in municipal finance, including "programs specifically designed to aid in the purchase/lease of equipment". Remember that financial advisor Steve Williams was talking about earlier? This could be it. Second reading--and possible passage--is next meeting, on the 28th. Happy birthday to me?

Bednar keeps moving along the coaching ladder

Ex-Blizzard defenseman Jared Bednar, who had been an assistant at Abbotsford in the AHL, is now a head coach again, still in the AHL, with Peoria. You may recall his last head coaching gig ended with a Kelly Cup--here's to similar success with the Rivermen!

Maybe I was hasty about the CHL?

The CHL has merged--well more like absorbed--the IHL, creating what they call a "super-league", but in reality is about the same size as the ECHL (now if the CHL and ECHL combine, THAT would be a super-league). Fort Wayne, Bloomington, and Quad City are in, Flint and Dayton are questionable, as is Port Huron--allegedly Port Huron may end up moving into Evansville's new arena, which would make things interesting as far as our fate, since previously the USHL was the top prospect for the new arena just a little ways down I-64.