WHL awards expansion franchise to Edmonton

[MC Buffalo]

This is a question to the members of this board who are from the Edmonton area...

Are you folks tired of names that are associated with the Oil industry? I would think they might want to move in a different direction. Isn't the West Edmonton Mall the largest indoor entertainment complex in the world? Even bigger than the Mall of America's in Minnesota I believe.

What about identifying with that instead of Oil Kings, Drillers, etc... they could go with the Edmonto Maulers, means one thing but sounds like they are referring to the WEM. I know the owner of the Pittsburgh USFL team (Edward Debartolo) named them the Pittsburgh Maulers because the owner made his money as a big time developer of shopping malls.

Not completely original since Pittsburgh has used it, but unique enough that it hasn't been used a ton.

[OMMF]

This is a question to the members of this board who are from the Edmonton area...

Are you folks tired of names that are associated with the Oil industry? I would think they might want to move in a different direction. Isn't the West Edmonton Mall the largest indoor entertainment complex in the world? Even bigger than the Mall of America's in Minnesota I believe.

What about identifying with that instead of Oil Kings, Drillers, etc... they could go with the Edmonto Maulers, means one thing but sounds like they are referring to the WEM. I know the owner of the Pittsburgh USFL team (Edward Debartolo) named them the Pittsburgh Maulers because the owner made his money as a big time developer of shopping malls.

Not completely original since Pittsburgh has used it, but unique enough that it hasn't been used a ton.

Apart from the fact the Maulers, even with the spelling change, conjures up images of teenaged girls, I would think the Edmonton group would want people to associate the junior team with the big club so they would give them similar names.

Now that I consider the audience demographic at most W games, maybe Maulers isn't so bad.

[HatCityEnforcer]

Okay, then this is the point where I do my usual lobbying for Fort Wayne...

Drawing 7-8K fans a night in crappy lower-tier leagues should be enough to convince somebody to put a top-level franchise in one of these places, shouldn't it?

Plus Fort Wayne filts in well with the AHL's Midwestern contingent...

Don't hold your breath waiting for Fort Wayne to make the jump to the American Hockey League. Here is what Komets President Michael Franke had to say about the prospects for such a move:

* The math (regarding operating costs in the AHL) doesn't make sense.

*An AHL team is running a budget between $4.5 and $5.5 million.

*The UHL budgets range from $1.5 million to the upper-twos.

*So you figure over the course of a season (in the AHL) you are probably going to have to average about 6,000 fans at $12 to $14 per ticket (before ticket surcharges to cover payments to arena leaseholders), so the tickets will have to average $17 to $18 (after the addition of the aforementioned surcharges).

*Our average ticket price is $8.75 revenue, not including Memorial Coliseum surcharges. To go to the AHL, we'd probably have to raise our ticket prices $5 to $7 across the board (before surcharges).

*I don't understand how anyone can look at a budget between $4 and $6 million and justify that budget with 4,500 people in attendance.

In other words, the club's president is concerned that his team would not be averaging 7,478 fans per game if ticket prices were hiked to cover the cost of doing business in the AHL. Further, he believes that if the Komets average attendance was driven down by the rise in ticket prices, he therefore could not justify meeting the costs of doing business at the AHL level.

In other words, the Fort Wayne Komets aren't AHL-bound under Mike Franke's stewardship.

Wow...way to attribute those quotes about Fort Wayne to me...seeing I never said anything at all about the K's going to the A...

My original quote:

There's a lot of chatter that the 'Runners could end up in Quad Cities....not a bad area for a team (the UHL Mallards are usually one of the better drawing minor league teams out there)....

The words you attributed to me were from Sodboy...and yes, I've read that exact article you cited in the Ft. Wayne paper (they do a hell of a job covering the K's and the UHL in general)...can't say I'd disagree with Franke's reasoning...the family is kind of rich for a reason.

Personally, I hope Fort Wayne does stay in the U, seeing Danbury always kicks their asses