Should and will the ECHL ever change its name?

[Nerdlinger]

As we all know, ECHL once stood for East Coast Hockey League, but after absorbing the West Coast Hockey League, they just decided to go with the orphaned initialism "ECHL." Presumably this was for brand recognition purposes, but it's not as though we don't remember what it used to stand for.

While I don't at all expect them to, I would suggest they adopt a new name. Pretty much anything would be better. "United Hockey League" isn't being used anymore, and it's rather apt in that it refers to how other leagues have been incorporated into the ECHL over the years. Any other suggestions?

Click to read more...

 

[offkilter]

Entire
Continent
Hockey
League

 

[Nerdlinger]

Entire
Continent
Hockey
League

A better "ECHL" than East Coast Hockey League, but still kinda lame.

 

[CrazyEddie20]

Gee, no one has ever brought this up before! You should call the league office on Monday at (609) 452-0770 and talk to Joe Babik about it - wait, no, you'd better ask for Brian McKenna.

 

[Nerdlinger]

Gee, no one has ever brought this up before! You should call the league office on Monday at (609) 452-0770 and talk to Joe Babik about it - wait, no, you'd better ask for Brian McKenna.

As productive a comment as I'm sure you meant that to be, I'm merely looking to gauge the opinions of this forum. Personally, I genuinely don't care what the league calls itself.

Would you care to address the topic at hand? It's fine if not, but I welcome constructive participation in the discussion.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

Nah, I consider the ECHL to be like the Big Ten.... the name's just entrenched by now. Even if it makes sense to change it, might as well just be illogical and keep the name.

 

[Nerdlinger]

Nah, I consider the ECHL to be like the Big Ten.... the name's just entrenched by now. Even if it makes sense to change it, might as well just be illogical and keep the name.

I have quibbles with the Big "Ten" and Big "12" too, but going into that would be a bit OT.

 

[JungleJON]

Or they could call themselves the league formerly known as the ECHL.

 

[Nerdlinger]

or they could call themselves the league formerly known as the echl.

tlfkatechl?

 

[Sports Enthusiast]

The AHL. They are more diverse than the AHL(or were anyway) the AHL almost had 1/3 of its teams in NY/pa for crying out loud.

 

[Nightsquad]

Well at the rate the NHL is monopolizing the minor league hockey structure and the willingness of Andrews and McKenna to just bow down & kow tow to I wouldn't be any more suprised to see both leagues respectively just become the NHL-D League and NHL-DII or NHL-D JR. Lol....

Seriously though for a while it was always funny the the ECHL was truly a coast to coast league well before the AHL. I have thought though maybe the ECHL should entertain possibly a rebrand but incorporate the names of leagues they actually took over, or create a divisional format based upon that idea. East Coast, Central, and West Coast. I am sure someone holds the brand logo and rights of the former United Hockey League possibly. Historically it always seems to bite a league somewhere down the road when they have tried to expand beyond their intended footprint. I however am hoping the ECHL finds some really good success at landing some former longtime AHL towns. I see Adirondack probably doing fine along with Norfolk. If Worcester lands a Bruins ECHL affiliated team watch them do better then when they were the AHL Sharks. Manchester, who knows, they might cut their nose off just to spite their face lol, especially if they win the Calder Cup which next season they will raise the banner and celebrate a championship in Ontario, that will be bad lol.

 

[CrazyEddie20]

As productive a comment as I'm sure you meant that to be, I'm merely looking to gauge the opinions of this forum. Personally, I genuinely don't care what the league calls itself.

Would you care to address the topic at hand? It's fine if not, but I welcome constructive participation in the discussion.

If they were going to change the name, they would have done it 15 years ago. It's almost certainly not changing, and definitely not this offseason. Should it have changed? No. They built brand recognition as the East Coast Hockey League, and carried it over as the ECHL. End of story, end of discussion.

I welcome constructive topics to discuss, not issues that have been beaten to death over the years and keep bubbling up because self-admitted know-littles think they're important discussions.

 

[Nerdlinger]

If they were going to change the name, they would have done it 15 years ago. It's almost certainly not changing, and definitely not this offseason. Should it have changed? No. They built brand recognition as the East Coast Hockey League, and carried it over as the ECHL. End of story, end of discussion.

I welcome constructive topics to discuss, not issues that have been beaten to death over the years and keep bubbling up because self-admitted know-littles think they're important discussions.

While it's clear that you only posted in this thread to troll, I thank you for the aspects of your comments that out of context could be construed as your facilitating discussion rather going out of your way to stifle it.

 

[Disengage]

The AHL had years where 25%-33% of the league was in Canadian cities. The IHL went over 30 years with only having American based teams. Neither changed their names. So no. Let's move on.

 

[Nerdlinger]

The AHL. They are more diverse than the AHL(or were anyway) the AHL almost had 1/3 of its teams in NY/pa for crying out loud.

You mean the ECHL should have been renamed the AHL, and the AHL renamed something else?

Well at the rate the NHL is monopolizing the minor league hockey structure and the willingness of Andrews and McKenna to just bow down & kow tow to I wouldn't be any more suprised to see both leagues respectively just become the NHL-D League and NHL-DII or NHL-D JR. Lol....

Seriously though for a while it was always funny the the ECHL was truly a coast to coast league well before the AHL. I have thought though maybe the ECHL should entertain possibly a rebrand but incorporate the names of leagues they actually took over, or create a divisional format based upon that idea. East Coast, Central, and West Coast. I am sure someone holds the brand logo and rights of the former United Hockey League possibly. Historically it always seems to bite a league somewhere down the road when they have tried to expand beyond their intended footprint. I however am hoping the ECHL finds some really good success at landing some former longtime AHL towns. I see Adirondack probably doing fine along with Norfolk. If Worcester lands a Bruins ECHL affiliated team watch them do better then when they were the AHL Sharks. Manchester, who knows, they might cut their nose off just to spite their face lol, especially if they win the Calder Cup which next season they will raise the banner and celebrate a championship in Ontario, that will be bad lol.

I like the idea of rebranding the divisions of the ECHL to reflect the history of the leagues it has incorporated. I think regardless of name, the ECHL does have a good chance to thrive if it continues to cooperate with the NHL in serving as the effective AA circuit. The ECHL can remain largely independently owned, as is it now, but affiliations with NHL teams will provide financial support to help keep its teams above water.

Furthermore, if the trend of exchanging eastern AHL sites for western ECHL sites continues, this could allow the ECHL to become more geographically compact and thus potentially more sustainable. While I understand that fans of Manchester, Adirondack, and Norfolk are naturally not thrilled with having their teams "demoted" to the ECHL, at least they still have hockey (and pro hockey at that). Worcester wasn't so lucky, though like you say, I do think they'd thrive as an ECHL affiliate of Boston.

 

[Nerdlinger]

The AHL had years where 25%-33% of the league was in Canadian cities. The IHL went over 30 years with only having American based teams. Neither changed their names. So no. Let's move on.

Well, "American" can be interpreted to encompass more of the Americas than the United States.

 

[Sports Enthusiast]

You mean the ECHL should have been renamed the AHL, and the AHL renamed something else?



I like the idea of rebranding the divisions of the ECHL to reflect the history of the leagues it has incorporated. I think regardless of name, the ECHL does have a good chance to thrive if it continues to cooperate with the NHL in serving as the effective AA circuit. The ECHL can remain largely independently owned, as is it now, but affiliations with NHL teams will provide financial support to help keep its teams above water.

Furthermore, if the trend of exchanging eastern AHL sites for western ECHL sites continues, this could allow the ECHL to become more geographically compact and thus potentially more sustainable. While I understand that fans of Manchester, Adirondack, and Norfolk are naturally not thrilled with having their teams "demoted" to the ECHL, at least they still have hockey (and pro hockey at that). Worcester wasn't so lucky, though like you say, I do think they'd thrive as an ECHL affiliate of Boston.

Yes rename the AHL something else and call the ECHL the AHL

 

[Sports Enthusiast]

Somebody brought up the NHL involvement. Why not make the AHL and ECHL one league at this point? Yes I'm aware a 60 team league sounds foolish but you have teams all over you'd just do some shuffling around. You'd do what the ECHL has done all year. No out of conference play in the season. It'd make schedules better because you wouldn't see the same 4 teams 15 times a year.

 

[Nerdlinger]

Yes rename the AHL something else and call the ECHL the AHL

I suppose you could call the AHL the IHL, since no one's using that name anymore and there are teams in Canada.

Somebody brought up the NHL involvement. Why not make the AHL and ECHL one league at this point? Yes I'm aware a 60 team league sounds foolish but you have teams all over you'd just do some shuffling around. You'd do what the ECHL has done all year. No out of conference play in the season. It'd make schedules better because you wouldn't see the same 4 teams 15 times a year.

I like the outside-the-box thinking there, but the problem may be that you'd be mixing players of different skill levels.

 

[Affiliate Watcher]

With the switch of ECHL west coast teams to the AHL and the AHL east coast teams to the ECHL, the league is more East Coast now than it was last year. I like ECHL, and would be happy if they went back to calling themselves the East Coast Hockey League.

However, I'm also old enough to remember the old IHL, and it was a great league before the morons running it tried to compete with the NHL instead of being the farm league it was.
So I would love to see the revival of the IHL brand, but only if they wanted to dump the ECHL banner.

 

[Sports Enthusiast]

I suppose you could call the AHL the IHL, since no one's using that name anymore and there are teams in Canada.



I like the outside-the-box thinking there, but the problem may be that you'd be mixing players of different skill levels.

I mean the AHL teams get better prospects and the ECHL teams are lucky to get anything but the bottom of the barrel but the vets are interchangeable and often one year are ECHL guys then AHL guys the next and go back and forth. Minor league baseball is setup like this. The only time you see out of league play is for the Championship. The two Champions at that level matchup. I mean with a 30 team league you'd get what you have now except the idea is you'd just have two 30 team conferences and every team could play each other because they would be geographically close. That's why most games are divisional because they are close and teams rarely play out of conference. There was a couple years recently where they didn't. Now maybe one team decides to go out East and another chooses to go West(not necessarily a East team the West team plays when they come out and vice versa) Alaska is always gunna have to fly but now they have nobody out West really. I mean yeah there's Utah and Rapid City but they are close to the middle of the country than the California teams were. It'd make sense to have them by and playing the Cali teams but minor league hockey doesn't necessarily do what's the best thing to do.

 

[Clinton Comets EHL]

Who thinks either league is going to change their name? Seriously, after 79 years the AHL is going to rebrand?

 

[Nerdlinger]

I mean the AHL teams get better prospects and the ECHL teams are lucky to get anything but the bottom of the barrel but the vets are interchangeable and often one year are ECHL guys then AHL guys the next and go back and forth. Minor league baseball is setup like this. The only time you see out of league play is for the Championship. The two Champions at that level matchup. I mean with a 30 team league you'd get what you have now except the idea is you'd just have two 30 team conferences and every team could play each other because they would be geographically close. That's why most games are divisional because they are close and teams rarely play out of conference. There was a couple years recently where they didn't. Now maybe one team decides to go out East and another chooses to go West(not necessarily a East team the West team plays when they come out and vice versa) Alaska is always gunna have to fly but now they have nobody out West really. I mean yeah there's Utah and Rapid City but they are close to the middle of the country than the California teams were. It'd make sense to have them by and playing the Cali teams but minor league hockey doesn't necessarily do what's the best thing to do.

It doesn't seem to be a bad idea to me, but there must be some reason it hasn't happened yet that I'm not fully aware of.

Who thinks either league is going to change their name? Seriously, after 79 years the AHL is going to rebrand?

I don't expect the ECHL to, I just think they should. There's nothing wrong with the AHL's name to me.

 

[Sports Enthusiast]

Well the IHL does have history with the AHL when they were competing leagues. Plus they have teams in Canada. Granted hardly really a big international deal but still not in America. The only people who care are diehards. The majority of the attendees going to games for teams probably wouldn't notice or care if there was a league name change.