AHL/ECHL/Minor/Junior League Hockey Changes

[monkeypower]

2 hours ago, Ridleylash said:

I mean, this is the same league with franchises bearing names like "Swamp Rabbits", "Ghost Pirates" and "Solar Bears", so I really don't see what's so bad about "Knight Monsters" comparatively to the rest of the ECHL, especially when it's blatantly obvious that Vegas will pick them up as an affiliate once their deal with Savannah is up with how the current trend of affiliates is to have them closer to the NHL team.

 

The league just has some franchises with corny-sounding names, past alumni of which include the Grrrowl, Road Warriors, Riverblades, Boardwalk Bullies, Whoopee and Mysticks. Besides, it gets people talking about the franchise more than if it were the 30,0000th team just called the "Monsters" or "Dragons".

 

Because it's a bold move unofficially naming your brand new minor league team after a professional team you currently have no affiliation with. Plus, a knight monster isn't a thing and since they got too cute with the name trying to force a connection, it also doesn't follow the naming convention of using an adjective to further describe a team name.

 

A swamp rabbit is a real animal while a ghost pirate and a solar bear are obvious plays on tangible things and all three of those teams follow the "adjective-name" convention as well. Same with the Golden Knights being the knights of gold, the Silver Knights being the knights of silver, the Sound Tigers previously being the tigers of the Sound, the Oil Kings being the kings of oil, the Wheat Kings being the kings of wheat, etc.

 

They are the monsters of (the) knight. What does that mean? Obviously, it's intended to be a play on Night Monsters, aka, monsters of the night, but that's not what the name is and isn't nearly as tangible of a thing like a type of knight or a king or a pirate or a bear. Night Monster sounds like someone who was terrorizing co-eds with Zodiac and BTK. Plus, the logo is a water serpent of some kind, who I don't think have ever been really associated with night when talking about animals, real or cryptid.

[Dilbert]

Its like they want an affiliation with Vegas so they add Knights to the name, but they are also technically part of the San Jose Sharks territory so they use teal as a color.

[monkeypower]

Obvious bias, but IMO, the best Teddy Bear Toss jersey was worn yesterday. It's fun, but not garish as still looks like normal jersey and has become a defacto alternate jersey because it's been the same (minus minor template changes and a font update) since about 2010.

 

[JohnnyCowboy5]

 

[FiddySicks]

Welp, my town got an ECHL team and the entire venture is already an enormous disaster. They announced the new name yesterday and it’s a travesty. 
 

They picked Knight Monsters
 

Dog:censored: name and people are furious. I live about a mile from the new arena and I won’t go to a single game even if offered free tickets. We’re in Sharks territory, this town HATES Vegas, and a group of outsiders with zero connection to the area (including Tim Tebow who’s one of my least favorite people on the planet) picked something that sucks the d**ks of our biggest rival city. Oh, and tickets are like three times the price of most other teams in the league and the new venue has zero parking. What a half brained mess concocted by a group of huge morons. Thankfully this thing will fold mid season because the logistics of housing everyone in Reno and trying to drive to South Lake just for games is lunacy. 

[monkeypower]

47 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

Welp, my town got an ECHL team and the entire venture is already an enormous disaster. They announced the new name yesterday and it’s a travesty. 
 

They picked Knight Monsters
 

Dog:censored: name and people are furious. I live about a mile from the new arena and I won’t go to a single game even if offered free tickets. We’re in Sharks territory, this town HATES Vegas, and a group of outsiders with zero connection to the area (including Tim Tebow who’s one of my least favorite people on the planet) picked something that sucks the d**ks of our biggest rival city. Oh, and tickets are like three times the price of most other teams in the league and the new venue has zero parking. What a half brained mess concocted by a group of huge morons. Thankfully this thing will fold mid season because the logistics of housing everyone in Reno and trying to drive to South Lake just for games is lunacy. 

 

There's been discussion on the last two pages of this thread about the team.

 

I thought the name was already dumb as a concept, see at the top of this page, but I didn't know the local angle of it and didn't really know the absolute lack of connection to the Golden Knights, which makes the name even dumber.

 

Re the Reno and the lack of parking thing; I've never been to Lake Tahoe, nor know the surrounding areas, but it kind of reads to me like a situation I'm familiar with being from Calgary with the nearby Banff National Park (the arena mockups scream the architecture style of towns like Banff and Canmore). Touristy nature area with towns that don't have a lot of available real estate, including parking, and what real estate is there is legislated by the government? Is it a case where the team isn't able to easily house the players and build an arena.

[nash61]

On 12/1/2023 at 4:46 PM, Burmy said:

They haven't even announced their affiliation...so if they're the affiliate of anybody but Vegas & Henderson, it's gonna make even less sense.

 

(Kinda like the Reading Royals after the LA Kings dumped them)

They also channeled the logo design of Vegas/Henderson for one of their alternate logos. If this afilliation doesn't happen, they're gonna look reeeaaall dumb.

 

[CaliforniaGlowin]

That T logo with the mountains is pretty clever

[FiddySicks]

8 hours ago, monkeypower said:

 

There's been discussion on the last two pages of this thread about the team.

 

I thought the name was already dumb as a concept, see at the top of this page, but I didn't know the local angle of it and didn't really know the absolute lack of connection to the Golden Knights, which makes the name even dumber.

 

Re the Reno and the lack of parking thing; I've never been to Lake Tahoe, nor know the surrounding areas, but it kind of reads to me like a situation I'm familiar with being from Calgary with the nearby Banff National Park (the arena mockups scream the architecture style of towns like Banff and Canmore). Touristy nature area with towns that don't have a lot of available real estate, including parking, and what real estate is there is legislated by the government? Is it a case where the team isn't able to easily house the players and build an arena.

Tahoe has always been a popular tourist attraction, and has always had stretches where the infrastructure is stretched to the max (4th of July and New Years Eve being the worst times). But ever since COVID things have been completely out of hand. It’s maxed out every single week. And the rental market took a catastrophic hit when everyone from the Bay Area went to telework and bought everything up. Now a lot of them have fled back to the bay because our winters are BRUTAL (look up the Donner party. I’m on the other side of the lake in a pocket that gets hit even harder). But they’ve kept their houses, use them sparingly, and just list them on Air BnB  at jacked up rated for all of the other tech workers who want to come up and injure themselves skiing. There’s basically nothing left and the local permanent population, most of which have been barely clinging on for years now, are fleeing. And due to being surrounded by several national forest preserves, right on the state line, and having already suffered a quarter of a million acre forest fire that nearly took out the entire town and left us all evacuated for a month, there just isn’t anywhere left to build. They want so desperately to capitalize on this big money that Vegas has, but we have a million more challenges that make it basically impossible. Dangerous, even. 
 

More on the winter part of that. Reno is almost 50 miles to the northeast of south lake, and the particular pass they would have to travel gets buried in ungodly amounts of snow. My mom died in January and just prior had to be airlifted out because the snow was so bad. We got 60 feet of snow last year in the Lake Tahoe basin. Not inches. FEET. It was above my back fence almost the entire winter and the last pile I broke up and melted was on June 2nd. And tying this to the job market, we don’t have the bodies available to work to keep the roads clear and safe, because nobody can afford to live in the area on a city/county workers salary. The idea that they’re going to pull this off in any way that’s financially feasible is ludicrous. I have no earthly idea what they’re thinking, and as much as I love sports, I think it’s outrageous that they’re even attempting this. We don’t want them here. Some of that is logistics, some of it is the culture. It feels like a really unnecessary invasion that’s bound to have a bad result. 
 

 

 

[Sykotyk]

17 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Tahoe has always been a popular tourist attraction, and has always had stretches where the infrastructure is stretched to the max (4th of July and New Years Eve being the worst times). But ever since COVID things have been completely out of hand. It’s maxed out every single week. And the rental market took a catastrophic hit when everyone from the Bay Area went to telework and bought everything up. Now a lot of them have fled back to the bay because our winters are BRUTAL (look up the Donner party. I’m on the other side of the lake in a pocket that gets hit even harder). But they’ve kept their houses, use them sparingly, and just list them on Air BnB  at jacked up rated for all of the other tech workers who want to come up and injure themselves skiing. There’s basically nothing left and the local permanent population, most of which have been barely clinging on for years now, are fleeing. And due to being surrounded by several national forest preserves, right on the state line, and having already suffered a quarter of a million acre forest fire that nearly took out the entire town and left us all evacuated for a month, there just isn’t anywhere left to build. They want so desperately to capitalize on this big money that Vegas has, but we have a million more challenges that make it basically impossible. Dangerous, even. 
 

More on the winter part of that. Reno is almost 50 miles to the northeast of south lake, and the particular pass they would have to travel gets buried in ungodly amounts of snow. My mom died in January and just prior had to be airlifted out because the snow was so bad. We got 60 feet of snow last year in the Lake Tahoe basin. Not inches. FEET. It was above my back fence almost the entire winter and the last pile I broke up and melted was on June 2nd. And tying this to the job market, we don’t have the bodies available to work to keep the roads clear and safe, because nobody can afford to live in the area on a city/county workers salary. The idea that they’re going to pull this off in any way that’s financially feasible is ludicrous. I have no earthly idea what they’re thinking, and as much as I love sports, I think it’s outrageous that they’re even attempting this. We don’t want them here. Some of that is logistics, some of it is the culture. It feels like a really unnecessary invasion that’s bound to have a bad result. 
 

 

 

To me this would be like if Moab or Jackson Hole got a team. There's money there, but the locals won't want to deal with it and the tourists aren't wasting their vacations for a minor league hockey game. 

[officeglenn]

New alternates for the Utica Comets of the AHL, with an updated logo from a past franchise in the city, the Utica Devils:

 

[Stroboy]

 

Prince Albert Raiders unveiled these alternates on Tuesday, and debuted them in their home game tonight

[Dante_X]

New 1994-inspired alternate jersey for the Halifax Mooseheads

[officeglenn]

Prince Albert Raiders to rebrand as "Cobra Chickens" for one game only in January:

 

 

[JohnnyCowboy5]

 

[S316]

Love those Blackhawks unis

[slapshot]

On 12/5/2023 at 1:36 PM, FiddySicks said:

Welp, my town got an ECHL team and the entire venture is already an enormous disaster. They announced the new name yesterday and it’s a travesty. 
 

They picked Knight Monsters
 

Dog:censored: name and people are furious. I live about a mile from the new arena and I won’t go to a single game even if offered free tickets. We’re in Sharks territory, this town HATES Vegas, and a group of outsiders with zero connection to the area (including Tim Tebow who’s one of my least favorite people on the planet) picked something that sucks the d**ks of our biggest rival city. Oh, and tickets are like three times the price of most other teams in the league and the new venue has zero parking. What a half brained mess concocted by a group of huge morons. Thankfully this thing will fold mid season because the logistics of housing everyone in Reno and trying to drive to South Lake just for games is lunacy. 

 

The AHL came to my area (Lowell, Mass.) back in 1998, a city only 25 miles northwest of Boston, deep in Bruins territory. The team was named LockMonsters (referring to the city's canals filled with rusted shopping carts and used hypodermic needles), and the team's affiliations were, in order: NY Islanders, Islanders/Kings, Hurricanes, and Hurricanes/Flames, before switching team name and affiliation to the Devils. Aside from the first season, attendance rarely reached 1500-2000 per game. The team learned that the only non-Bruins hockey drawing fans in this area was UMass-Lowell in Hockey East, a D1 college conference. Yet the AHL still lasted in Lowell for 11 years.

This area was saturated with AHL hockey for a 15+ year span from the late 90s through 2010s. There were actually 4 teams within an hour of Boston (Lowell, Manchester, Worcester, Providence), 7 if you expand to 2 hours (Springfield, Hartford, Portland). Only one of them was a Bruins affiliate – Providence. Today, only Providence, Hartford and Springfield remain in the AHL. Portland and Worcester have ECHL teams. Manchester is basically tenantless, while Lowell has UMass-Lowell (Hockey East) and will be hosting the PWHL Boston franchise.

[JohnnyCowboy5]

 

[Ridleylash]

Henderson has unveiled their first third jersey;

[The_Admiral]

Oh good lord I thought we agreed not to talk about Game of Thrones.