Can't We All Just Get Along?
The hockey wars between the ACHL remnants, the SEHL and the WHA-2/EHL/SHL, may be in need of the UN, or at least a good preschool teacher.

Brian Ross
Sr. Editor
Minor League News

OPINION

05.28.04 - It might be easier for Russians to follow the melodrama of hockey in the Southeast. Aside from a love of hockey, they are used to the intricate turns, plots, counterplots, and subplots that would make Tolstoy truly proud. For those of you Americans trying to figure this mess out, here goes:

North and South (and East and West)

The Atlantic Coast Hockey League (ACHL) was formed to exploit opportunities in all those markets in the Southeastern "bald patch" where fate, bad marketing, or just plain incompetence had driven out various hockey teams from leagues past and present.

In its first year, the owners had a falling out that ripped the league in two, allegedly in a dispute that was rumored to be over both rules and poor handling of money by the league office.

Orlando Seals owner David Waronker, saying that he could do it better, seized an opportunity to ally with the Niagara Falls-based World Hockey Association (the "rising" major league). He bolted, taking half of the league with him. Thus the WHA-2, the alleged minor league of the major league which had not yet begun operation, was born.

Confused? Cliff Notes will be on sale at the bottom of the article. The saga continues:

ACHL president Bill Coffey found himself captain of a much smaller ship. Then one night Coffey's first mate, Jim Riggs, pulled off a second mutiny. The rest of the crew bundled Mr. Coffey up on his own lifeboat and set him adrift. The mutineers formed their own league, the Southeast Hockey League (SEHL) with four teams.

Call it League Lite.

The two leagues then proceeded to slug it out in a turf war to stake out all of the half-dead and dying markets available in the Southeast in 2003. Waronker had the deeper pockets, but, by the end of 2004, clear winners in this power struggle were hard to come by.

The SEHL teams stayed within their budgets and operated successfully. What they lacked in deep pockets they made up for in the skill of their league and front office people, who all have decent hockey pedigrees.

The WHA-2, by contrast, talked a great game, and delivered a whole lot less. The league ended the year in debt, with a lot of disgruntled and frustrated players and ex-front office employees in their wake. The league office closed at the end of the season with many players looking for final paychecks and travel money. In spite of Waronker's assurances that all debts to players would be settled, many left their hockey homes without road cash, and a few without their final paychecks. Even when those catch up to the players, the taste of the league's treatment of them remains a bitter pill.

By the end of the WHA-2's 2003-2004 season, it was quite clear that the promised ownership of minor league teams by invisible WHA parent teams was the smoke and mirrors that it looked like at the beginning of the season. Waronker bolted from his own league to form the Eastern Hockey League (EHL), in part as a disassociation from the WHA who shared the name, but wasn't willing to pony up the cash to support teams in the league, as promised.

In a twist worthy of old Tolstoy, Waronker picked up the former ACHL president Bill Coffey, adrift in his rowboat last month, and put him back at the helm of his new hockey flagship, the EHL.

The next act? The EHL, which as the WHA-2 could not attain stability and profitability in its current cities, called for an expansion plan that poaches the turf of several SEHL teams.

This week's novel turn in the drama came when the ECHL objected to the EHL name being too close to their own. So the league morphed again, this time into the Southern Hockey League (SHL). No word on whether the SEHL is going to drop the naming bomb on that one. Make sure to mark it down on your scorecards if you care.

Time Outs for All

This dispute is one of the most childish that we've witnessed in all of minor league sports. As Lincoln once said "A house divided against itself cannot stand," or to quote the less eloquent Rodney King of the LA riots, "Can't we all just get along?"

Everybody agrees on one goal: To bring stable, entertaining, affordable hockey to cities in the Southeast. Everyone knows how badly hockey has been handled in the past in most of these places: Orlando has had more leagues than Elizabeth Taylor has had husbands.

The petty squabbling and turf wars will kill off both leagues, and knock hockey out of the marketplace for decades, unless someone else is stupid enough to come along and try and pillage these markets again. As in Russian novels, it takes a generation to let the scorched earth of war heal up properly.

Neither league is independently doing well enough to gloat. Both actually put some really good hockey on the ice. Good enough to, oh, pay for.

The SEHL has great management but could do much better with the kind of capital and political clout that David Waronker's [This Week's League Name Here] can generate.

Riggs & Co. know full-well that four teams don't cut it, and they can't get much bigger or better when Waronker's [This Week's League Name Here] is fishing for ownership groups in the same cities.

Waronker can preserve his multi-million dollar investment in Southeastern hockey by running his own team, and helping new ownership groups form and sustain.

SEHL prez Jim Riggs is, by anyone's estimation, a complete and total pro. As a league president, he has made more hockey with less backing than anyone running a league in recent memory. He can make sure that players get paid, schedules are maintained reasonably and officiating is well handled. He also knows the judicious use of the media, having done media before.

Waronker is a sincere, rich hockey fan who wants to bring the game to people living under palm trees and slugging back Jack Daniels, not Canadian Mist. For this, David, we applaud you.

Money aside, though, David knows jack-squat about the business of the sport. This is not a gig where on-the-job training works particularly well, either.

Between the operational missteps, the statements to the media that don't pan out, and ill-will that has been engendered in the players, there is a real need for competent people to manage the several million dollar investment that Waronker has in minor league hockey.

Comedian Tom Lehrer once said: "If someone doesn't have anything to say, the least that they can do is shut up." These are sage words that the gaffe-weary WHA-2/EHL/SHL should consider.

Jim Riggs is an old hand at the minor hockey game, and a good guy too. With Waronker behind him, there is little doubt that hockey in the Southeast can succeed.

So we would advocate one more turn in this Russian hockey romance... reconciliation.

We'll set up the peace table at the Ramada Inn in a neutral spot, say Des Moines, Iowa. Now for a name... How about the Unified Southeastern Association (USA)?

What with John Ashcroft so busy chasing after pornographers and washing out Howard Stern's mouth with soap, it should be years before the federal government sues you for the copyright infringement.