I lived through this at middle-distance, as a local fan of the Charlotte Checkers during the time when the old ECHL East Division was being raided by the NHL and AHL.
It was a weird time to be a hockey fan in Virginia/Carolinas. The ECHL was of course a wild league and was thriving in the region. Hampton Roads (coached by John Brophy btw) was in the middle of a cluster of explosive rivalries, primarily with Greensboro and Richmond. The fanbases weren’t overwhelmingly huge but they were respectable for low-minors hockey. For all we knew back then, these teams were laying down roots for years to come.
Part of the dynamic was that the AHL and IHL were in an arms race. The AHL had the valuable affiliations, but it was a condensed northeastern league with limited reach. IHL saw an opportunity to jump into major-league markets and form a coast-to-coast AAA+ league based around Chicago, SF, Denver, Orlando, etc. Eventually they got the big idea to compete with the NHL, but that’s another story. The important thing here is that the AHL suddenly realized they needed to expand or die.
First shoe dropped in 1996, when the AHL decided to capture the mid-Atlantic region by ransacking the ECHL’s East Division. Their plan was to take over Charlotte, Greensboro, and Hampton Roads. That plan was met with a lot of pushback, primarily because it would have meant a significant increase in ticket prices while changing out several old rivals for distant, irrelevant opponents. Charlotte backed out due to arena issues (moving to the larger Coliseum meant installing an expensive ice plant). Greensboro moved forward over the objections of some fans. At the same time, reading the writing on the wall and seeing its NHL potential, Raleigh started preparing a bid for an expansion team.
Now, I may be remembering this wrong, but IIRC this was when George Shinn decided to try and scoop the whole situation in HR by launching an expansion bid there. This was of course a hostile bid to both the ECHL and AHL teams. Shinn was not a local to the town; he was entirely trying to parlay his Hornets success into being a multi-league owner. The videos do a good job explaining how it played out, with neither the STH base nor public funding materializing to justify the bid.
I feel certain that the mystery owner was Karmanos.
The epilogue to all of this:
- Hampton Roads, having experienced a dizzying drama, remained a status-quo core ECHL market for another decade until they finally graduated to the AHL under more strategic circumstances.
- Within a few months of the formal bid, Karmanos settled on Raleigh.
- Because Karmanos needed a landing pad for the Hurricanes while the arena was built, he was able to vacate the now-AHL Greensboro team from their building. The fanbase there, which had endured losing their beloved ECHL team, now lost their AHL team and suffered 2 humiliating years of national mockery at NHL prices. This was effectively the end of Greensboro as a hockey market, future efforts at ECHL resuscitation drawing little interest.
- Charlotte remained a core ECHL market until graduating to the AHL, where they just won their first championship.
- Having lost their natural established rivals, most of the rest of the ECHL East collapsed. Richmond, Roanoke, Knoxville, and a series of smaller towns are still without pro hockey. Charleston has remained a long term ECHL cornerstone.
- Shinn transitioned from trying to bilk money from Hampton Roads to trying to bilk money from Charlotte. Within half a decade he was enmeshed in a sex scandal and the city had rejected the Hornets by referendum. He took that team to New Orleans and was not missed when he finally cashed out.
- The IHL died on the hill of trying to compete in big-time markets as a national league. The AHL consolidated the leftovers to become the sole AAA league with clear strategic NHL affiliation. The ECHL entered the small-market vacuums and swallowed the other AA leagues. The NHL expanded and chose Atlanta as its southeastern hub, with Karmanos adding a bridge team in Raleigh as the core of a future southeastern division.
