For NHL teams looking to get their prospects back on the ice in a competitive situation, the ECHL may soon be an option. The minor league announced today that training camps will open on November 27 for all the teams that are starting their season on December 11. The ECHL has split their league into two groups, with 13 teams beginning on December 11 and the rest waiting until January 15. The training camps for the latter group will open on January 1.
The teams that will begin things later this month are Allen Americans, Florida Everblades, Greenville Swamp Rabbits, Indy Fuel, Jacksonville Icemen, Kansas City Mavericks, Orlando Solar Bears, Rapid City Rush, South Carolina Stingrays, Tulsa Oilers, Utah Grizzlies, Wheeling Nailers and Wichita Thunder. They will play a 72-game season.
Still, there is some discussion on which prospects would actually be eligible to play. Michael Russo of The Athletic tweets that the NHL was discussing a change that would make only players on entry-level contracts eligible to play in the low minors. For many organizations though, getting any of their young players into a game situation will be imperative for their development.
Why the split?
@Sheep8 – Why the split? Good question. In typical ECHL-form, there is little to nothing to explain this, unless we want to sift through a giant toy box of search results (not on their site) hoping to find a mere clue. They did state that Norfolk is suspending operations for the upcoming season, but that doesn’t explain much of anything else. This is just one of the reasons I continue to refer to this outfit as the Extremely Corrupt Hockey League (BTW, it stopped being called “East Coast” several years ago, yet many still hang on to that). Perhaps @Gavin has a secret source to further explain this, but we won’t hold it against him if he runs into the same dead ends.
Just speculation but it appears that most if not all of the teams that are starting first are in states without strict COVID restrictions. So they might be able to have crowds. Since box office is so important to minor league sports, there’s no profit without fans in the stands.