I disagree with most of what you are saying. It only makes sense to have your AHL farm team close. The positives out weigh the negatives, if there is a negative.
How does moving your AHL team closer to the parent club make it weaker?? If anything, it'll make rivalries within the division stronger.
AHL exists now more than ever to develop players. Only going to increase as more teams are bought by parents. Some people have trouble with that.
You don’t have an issue with it because you’re looking at it through the lens of that an NHL fan and not that of someone that’s followed or been loyal to the AHL. There isn’t a problem with that. In fact, I expect it. This is not NHL, however. It’s not even the IHL, ECHL, CHL or any other ‘HL’ you want to think of. The AHL is entirely different. It’s a league that goes back 80 years and it has a fan base that goes back just as far. Springfield is an original city in the league so there are families that have followed hockey in the city dating back to the days of Eddie Shore and the Kings, Indians and now Falcons. In each case – not so much in latter – it was about winning the Calder Cup. It was about winning on the ice and engraining themselves into the community. Fans lived and breathed with their team and in some cases – if you believe the stories – bled for their team. It’s like that in Portland, Hershey, Syracuse, Rochester or any other city that’s had the AHL for any length of time.
AHL fans are not ignorant to the change that hockey is undergoing. They know the league is becoming more and more of a development league for the NHL. They’ve accepted that fact and in most cases they have embraced it because of players that come through a particular system and move onto the NHL. A city like Portland can boast about Bobby Ryan, Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and even Oliver Ekman-Larsson coming through town along the way to the NHL despite short the stay or reasons for it.
I’m willing to cut the fan bases in Springfield, Manchester, Worcester, Glens Falls and Norfolk a little slack because it’s to have a team pulled out from underneath them is tough. UltraSwat is right… Western NHL clubs did blow up an entire league to suit their needs. They did with threats. It wasn’t for development or ease of travel. It wasn’t for that purpose at all. They did it for salary cap reasons. It’s that pure and simple.
Having an affiliate on the east coast didn’t hurt the LA Kings or Anaheim Ducks. The Kings did a pretty good job at developing players in Manchester, winning how many Stanley Cups and a Calder Cup last season.
Yet, Arizona (then Phoenix) left San Antonio for Portland. Don Maloney and Brad Treliving sat in a press conference and told everyone that it’s better for the development of their players to be in the Northeast than it was in San Antonio because they can have more practice time, home time and better overall care for their prospects. Regier made the same claim in Springfield last season. What’s changed?
I remember having a conversation with Maloney after that press conference in Portland about why they left San Antonio. I couldn’t figure out why they’d leave considering San Antonio was closer to Glendale and it afforded them an easier opportunity to see their prospects than it was hoping a red eye to Boston and driving another 90 minutes north to Portland.
He said that they’d rather do that than subject their prospects to the insane travel of the AHL. He pointed out that during their final season in San Antonio the team spent more than 100 days in hotels and at times went more than a week without a real practice. They’d find some tiny rink where they rented an hour of ice time for quick skate, but could never get two or three hours of on ice instruction or coaching.
He laid out the schedule like a timeline and I was just shocked. It’s stuck with me to this day because I couldn’t never understand how any team would want to have their players in that situation. Here’s the example he gave me.
Thursday Morning – Fly from San Antonio to Chicago
Thursday Afternoon – Arrive in Chicago. Check-in to hotel, bus to rink so players to shake off rust
Thursday Evening – Team dinner
Friday Morning – Pregame skate, return to hotel, lunch and nap
Friday Evening – Play Chicago. Return to hotel for 3am wakeup call.
Saturday Morning – Fly to Winnipeg. Bus to rink for morning skate
Saturday Afternoon – Lunch/Meetings, Nap
Saturday Evening – Play Manitoba. Return to Hotel for 3am wakeup call
Sunday Morning – Fly to Des Moines. Bus to rink for treatments, check into hotel for day rooms
Sunday Afternoon – Play 5pm game
Sunday Evening – Fly to San Antonio
Monday – Off
Tuesday Morning – Morning Skate. Bus to Austin
Tuesday Evening – Play Texas. Return home after game
Wednesday – Off
Thursday – Repeat
That’s insane travel… And, remember that commercial flying so that is dealing with the TSA, Customs and the everyday B.S. that happens with airline travel. That’s not changing with a move to Tucson. They will still have to fly to Los Angeles and bus to Ontario or fly to Stockton or San Jose, Chicago, San Antonio, Des Moines, Grand Rapids etc. The only difference is they’ll now play less games in order to get the extra practice, but the travel hasn’t changed. And, for those that might claim ‘well the NHL has to travel’…. Yeah they do, but they fly charter, hotels are 5 star resorts in most cases and they don’t play 3-in-3 weekends. The grind is 10x harder in the AHL than it is in the NHL.
Nobody is saying that AHL teams going to the west coast is a bad thing…. I’m simply saying that NHL teams are being disingenuous for the reason why they are putting them there…. They moved team to the west so they could save a day or two worth of salary on the cap when calling a player up from the AHL.
To that point… Being able to recall a player in Tucson to Glendale is going to happen how many times? 10, 11, 12 times maybe? What’s more likely to happen: Tucson is in Austin, Chicago, Ontario, San Jose or somewhere in between and Arizona is in Edmonton, Calgary, Colorado, on an east coast swing or even home and they’ll need to recall a player or vice versa. What if the Coyotes are on the road and the AHL club is home? It’s going to be the same travel issues for the west as it is the east in terms of recalling a player.
I’ll revert back to the original point I was attempting to make. How many times will a team recall a player, and is that travel more important vs. the travel of the entire AHL team within their schedule and how does that promote development?
