Honestly?

With all this fuss and excitement over the Everblades naming our new head coach the news of a new team entering the league during the 2011-2012 season flew under my radar. Now that I've had time to read up on it I'm pretty sure it's the dumbest move the ECHL has made in a while.

Why?

The ECHL has decided to grant membership to a team in Chicago. I know you're all thinking "don't they have a hockey team?" They do. In fact Chicago is home to three hockey teams already. Aside from the Blackhawks, they also have the Wolves of the AHL, and the Steel of the USHL. I've gone ahead and made this map of all the hockey teams in Chicago to make the stupidity all pretty.


View Chicago Hockey Teams in a larger map

I don't have to tell you how much I love hockey. I really don't think I can ever have too much, but  even for me that's a lot of hockey. It's almost too much. I understand why the Chicago Wolves have been relatively successful, they offer an affordable alternative to seeing the Blackhawks (obviously the Steel are an even better deal). The problem is, how can one city support four teams? I really have my doubts that this can be done. Now, I understand the Hawks have managed to capture the attention of Chicago sports fans with the Stanley Cup win, but really, are all the people who just jumped on the bandwagon going to really care about a team in a developmental league? Why would you really care about players who might be a star someday when you can watch Patrick Kane and Johnathan Toews now? Why care when you can watch players that are one step from the NHL? Someone just getting into hockey (or someone who has just jumped on the bandwagon) doesn't want to see the Donati twins. They want to see the Sedins.

Sadly, the ECHL is making a huge mistake, one they're going to regret. There are plenty of cities that could better support an ECHL franchise. Heck, the brand new, shiny arena in Orlando would do well with hockey tenant. Baltimore is another option that tends to come up anytime I get into a conversation about the league expanding. It may also be a good idea for the ECHL to look into expanding in the West more. The conferences are very lopsided (12 vs. 8). It's just such a waste to grant this franchise to a city that already has three professional hockey teams. There are so many better cities out there, that can fully support a team.

I guess there is a bright side in all of this. The team is running a name your team contest. Chicago Redundancy anyone?

Friday Links

Happy Friday! As always, I have some great hockey links to get your weekend started.

-Your Wikipedia hockey page- "Offer Sheet"

- $295 for a game worn, Jordan Henry, Everblades jersey? Seriously?

- I'm so in love with this blog, AHL in Photos. My personal favorite so far, the 6/11/10 post of Anton Khudobin.

- My inner yinzer loves this article.

- All of the NHL teams released their schedules, including the Lightning and Panthers. So, who's in for a trip East (or West)?

- Youngblood is on my "I won't go out of my way to look for it, but if it's on, I'm watching it all the way through" list. I think wearing this jersey to Everblades games this year might be a good idea.

- I'm totaly a crazy cat lady in the making.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

We Have a Coach!

As mentioned in the post yesterday, the Everblades held a big press conference today. They finally named the new coach for next season. Greg Poss is the new head coach for the Everblades (player and coaching stats here). He's spent the last 10 years or so coaching in Germany, and as you can see, his German is pretty good.



Because I was forced to take Spanish in high school, I had to google translate his German wikipedia entry, which is pretty interesting...

"By the early end of his playing career was Greg Poss has 25 years coach of the Swedish clubs Olofström IK. Then he came to Germany, where he trained first Sonthofen and the EC Timmendorfer beach. With the Iserlohn Roosters, which he coached from 1997, it rose to 2000 in the DEL. In spite of the smallest budgets in the league by far, the Roosters under Poss 2002/03 narrowly missed the entry in the play-offs. Then he was voted Best Coach DEL ". In 1996 he was Iserlohn, 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2001 Coach of the Year. In the following season of Americans switched to the Nuremberg Ice Tigers. With them he won the 2003/04 and 2004/05 respectively fifth place As the successor of Stéphane Richer, he took on 14 December 2005, the Adler Mannheim. Now after you missed the play-offs 2005/06, 2006/07 Poss reached with the eagles from the double cup final and championship. After a poor start and a bust series, he was on 22 December 2007 in Mannheim dismissed and replaced by Dave King."

"Since 1 October 2004 Poss managed in a dual role, the German national ice hockey team. After completion of the 2004/2005 season, he resigned his post at the Ice Tigers. The German Ice Hockey Federation (DEB), finishing it in early February 2005 from a permanent contract, although the recent results were not as positive. When Germany's Cup in 2004 we lost four times in four games and a four-nation tournament in Budapest was subject to Canada and the Slovak Republic. A disgrace was prevented by a tight 4-3 against the hosts Hungary. In preparation for the World Cup in 2005, it ran better against the U.S. you just missed with a 2:3 a surprise victory in Belarus as one even 4:1. At the World Cup could be on the other hand celebrate any victory in the preliminary round, so we moved into the relegation round. The German national team got there three points from three games and went off as the second last Relegation in the B group. Subsequently, the criticism in the media is greater and there were rumors of a detachment of Poss. Poss, however, remained, despite protests from the DEB national coach. The former assistant coach Ernst Höfner and Bernhard Englbrecht were replaced by Uwe Krupp and Klaus Merk. On 14 December 2005 his contract was terminated, a day later, Uwe Krupp announced as his successor." 

I'm pretty excited about the new coach, his coaching stats are pretty decent. It's of course too early to get really excited, and we won't know how good of a coach he really is until the season starts. October can't get here fast enough.

YouTube Tuesday

The Everblades announced they will be having a press conference on Wednesday at noon. I would put good money on them announcing the new coach.

Either way it's exciting news!



The press confrence is open to the public. I'm pretty sure I won't make it, but if anyone goes please shoot me an e-mail with your thoughts and or pictures.

The funny thing is, I had a really vivid dream last night that they announced the new coach was Jim Paek (more info here and here if your interested). It would be pretty cool to have an ex-Penguin, and a three-time Stanley cup winner(two as a player and one as an assistant coach) lead the Everblades. Here's the most awesome thing, his only playoff goal was the cup winning goal against the Blackhawks in 92. If you're not going to score often, you better score big I guess.

ECHL Affiliations

(enjoy this quick post between my double shifts, hopefully it makes sense)
With nothing newsworthy going on in the Everblades universe, I've had a lot of free time on my hands. Because of this, I present a lovely spreadsheet of affiliations for all ECHL teams. The full sized version can be found here (the blogs templates likes to shrink things).




At the bottom you'll notice I've included the NHL teams that are without an ECHL affiliate. The Rangers lost theirs when the Checkers moved to the AHL (and became our affiliate), and the Wild lost their affiliate when the Johnstown Chiefs folded. Also interesting is the Lightnings choice to use a CHL affiliate instead of an ECHL one (which is just another reason to cheer for the Panthers in my opinion).

The new team in Greenville will be announcing the winning name from the contest they held later this month. I'm hoping they announce their NHL affiliate at the same time. I don't like all the red at the bottom.