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Wanted: minor league hockey
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Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams
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Bruce Zoldan
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The Chevy Centre
A decision on joining the ECHL must be made by Jan. 21.
YOUNGSTOWN — City officials and the owner of the Mahoning Valley Phantoms are negotiating to bring minor league hockey back to the Chevrolet Centre.
The city and Bruce Zoldan, owner of the Phantoms junior hockey team, are talking with the owners of the Wheeling [W.Va.] Nailers, an ECHL franchise, about relocating to Youngstown.
“I’ve had multiple conversations with Wheeling, and there’s very strong interest” in coming to Youngstown, Zoldan said.
“I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll have an ECHL team next season,” Mayor Jay Williams said.
Getting a team from the ECHL, considered among the top minor hockey leagues, is the center’s top priority when it comes to hockey, said Eric Ryan, the facility’s executive director.
There also have been preliminary discussions with the owners of the Dayton Bombers as well as with teams from lower leagues. But the conversations with the Nailers are more serious, Zoldan and Williams said.
The Nailers minor league hockey team, a Pittsburgh Penguins affiliate, is an original ECHL team from when the league formed as the East Coast Hockey League in 1988.
The Nailers are “losing big time at the box office” and “if that trend continues, the team’s future in Wheeling could be in doubt,” according to a recent article in The Intelligencer, a Wheeling newspaper that quotes Jim and Rob Brooks, the team’s co-owners.
Attempts to reach the brothers by The Vindicator on Tuesday and Wednesday were unsuccessful.
Attendance at Nailers’ games is among the lowest in the ECHL this year. The league average per game is 3,896, while the Nailers’ average is 2,644 a game, the fourth-worst among the ECHL’s 23 teams, according to the league’s Web site.
If a deal is to be made, it will have to be done quickly.
Brian McKenna, ECHL commissioner, said the deadline for Youngstown to join the league for the 2009-10 season is Jan. 21 when the league convenes its midseason meeting at Reading, Pa.
“We do have a real interest,” said McKenna of bringing an ECHL franchise to the Chevrolet Centre. “To have something approved for the ’09-10 season, it would have to be put before the board at the upcoming midseason meeting.”
“Right now, there is nothing firm in front of me,” McKenna said. “That doesn’t mean that something couldn’t be” by Jan. 21.
Regarding getting a deal done before the deadline, Williams said, “I don’t think it’s insurmountable. It won’t be easy, but it’s not insurmountable.”
Zoldan said he expects a decision as to whether he’d be involved in a partnership with the owners of a current hockey team would be made before Jan. 21.
“There’s no guarantee I’d be involved, but if I do get involved, I want a good partnership that will benefit everyone,” he said. “If you have deep pockets and are looking for something to build, I’d be interested. I’m not looking for a partner with a desperate need to survive.”
Zoldan said an ECHL team would need between 3,000 and 3,500 fans a game to break even financially.
Zoldan said the Johnstown [Pa.] Chiefs, the ECHL team with the worst attendance in the league — 2,079 a game — is an outside possibility to relocate to Youngstown.
But Bill Bredin, the Chief’s vice president, said his team’s “entire focus is on negotiating a long-term lease to keep the Chiefs in Johns- town and that’s looking promising.”
McKenna said he was impressed with the center when he visited it in the fall.
The ECHL prefers its new teams take at least nine months to hire staff and sell tickets, he said.
“Season tickets sell two or four at a time, not 200,” McKenna said.
Having local business leaders invest in a hockey team for the city-owned center is very important but not absolutely necessary, Williams said.
The Phantoms, a junior hockey league team, play a majority of its home games this season at the center.
If Zoldan becomes part-owner of an ECHL team, he said he’d retain ownership of the Phantoms but move it out of the area. If he has no involvement with a new team, Zoldan said he’d move the Phantoms back to the Ice Zone, a facility he owns in Boardman.
The Phantoms signed a one-year deal with the city after the Youngstown SteelHounds, which played home games for three seasons at the center, was kicked out of the Central Hockey League on June 2, 2008, over a financial dispute.
Herb Washington, the SteelHounds’ owner, is “not substantially involved” in negotiations for a new hockey team at the center, Williams said. But he is welcome to participate if interested.
If the ECHL plan falls through, there is another minor league interested in Youngstown.
Paul Pickard, president of the International Hockey League, says he has not heard from anyone in Youngstown since he met with Washington last summer.
The IHL is much smaller than the ECHL, with six teams in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois.
Pickard said his league could be a little more flexible with a deadline for adding a Youngstown team but said a commitment would be needed soon.
XContributor: Vindicator Sports Writer Tom Williams
skolnick@vindy.com