I won’t bash the players, who are trying to live their dream, but the FHL is just a bush league run by completely inept people and it will eventually fail. I actually believe in the concept of single-A hockey and I think it has a place in the northeast for cities that are looking to fill small-sized facilities like Lewiston.
Don Kirnan and Andrew Richards have bungled every decision made by the league and it’s made them look foolish, stupid or rather put a complete bunch of morons.
Just look at this Cape Cod franchise as one example. They placed the team originally in Binghamton, knowing full-well they were going to be crushed by the AHL BSens. When that failed they moved the team midseason to the Cape, playing out of the Rec Center in Hyannis. When that failed they bounced games from rink to rink, playing in front of 20 or 30 people a night to now moving to become a team that’s essentially a road team.
This is the second consecutive year they’ve taken over a franchise.
They tried to move this team to Lewiston and Jim Cain, owner of the Colisee, told them to pound sand because he’d rather have a handful EJHL games and a USPHL team than the FHL. That should tell you everything you need to know.
Look at Vermont’s bungled franchise, the franchise in Akwesasne, which was owned by a known criminal – maybe not so much of a big deal, looking at the NHL history of ownership – and the rumors of player poor player treatment, placing a franchise 1800 miles away from the core of your league in Danville, and now one person owns essentially half the teams in your league – Barry Soskin owns Danville and Dayton and now is footing the bills for the CNY team – who is crooked in his own right.
This of course doesn’t even include the New Jersey team moving to an outdoor rink in Williamsport.
Again, I believe that a version of this league could work if they stayed within their means. It should be a six team league within the northeast US and make those franchises stable and successful before adding teams like Danville, Dayton or other Midwest cities. I’ll point to the SPHL as a good example. They made numerous mistakes, but they stuck with their core principals, staying within the southeast and they’ve now begun to really grown the league into bigger cities than were former ECHL cities.
I have no respect for Kirnan and Richards for screwing this up… And, what’s even more depressing is they are both members of the voting council for USA Hockey. Kirnan owns the Stars organization and is the commissioner of the Empire Jr Hockey League and Richards is commissioner of the Eastern States Hockey League. That’s a thought that continually scares me.
