ECHL Commissioner Ryan Crelin made his annual visit to Glens Falls, NY, before the Christmas/Holiday Break and touched on the state of the league while answering questions from the Media. The Media started the availability by asking him about the current state of the league.
“First off the addition of two new teams so that’s nice up to 29 this year. Attendence is trending up again which after the past couple of year I thought would be difficult but very encourged by that, the hockey has been good, pretty clean, we had some rough and tumble last night but on the whole it’s been pretty clean and pretty good”
Ryan Crelin on the state of the 2024-25 season
Scheduling/All-Star Game/Upcoming Events
One of the biggest topics around the league every year is the schedule and the amount of travel for some teams. This season, there was one wrinkle in the schedule that caused a lot of changes, and that was the fact that the Newfoundland Growlers folded at the end of last season.
“It’s gonna get better. Part of that is just the reality of the situation is we lost Newfoundland and we were doing scheduling and that really put a kink into the overall system normally that wouldn’t happen but I’ll tell you that normally that wouldn’t happen but just scheduling in general, not only in our level, but all levels, gets pretty complicated. A lot of competeing factors, building avaliability and when you see something wanky like that it means a date probably got lost and what I mean is you build a 1,000 game schedule and you move one piece and a million other things have to change and if someone loses a date in their building for a concert or another event we gotta find a way to fix that piece and that may recquire three or four other changes. It’s not ideal, we have our guiderails to start, if the first schedule we first launch ever is the schedule we finish would be a miracle, but that first one looks really good, but it’s a big messy world”
This season, there will be no All-Star Game; instead, the Kalamazoo Wings will host the Fort Wayne Komets for the 2025 Hockey Heritage Classic. This is the second time that Kalamazoo has opted for a Heritage game instead of an All-Star Game. Despite not having an All-Star Game, the league is expected to announce an All-Star Team between the middle and end of January.
“We actually started a number of year ago letting teams have the option of an All-Star Game or a Heritage Game. It’s a lot of the same festavities, a Heritage game you’re wrapping around a regular season game. Kalamazoo did it 2016, the first Heritage game was in 2014 in Alaska becuase if I put an All-Star Game in Alaska I’m pretty sure I wouldn have lost my job becuase nobody wanted to fly their players to Alaska for an All-Star game. It’s just an oppurtunity to give some markets a different way or bringing in the Hockey Hall Fame or the Hall of Fame and all the festivities that come along with our mid-season thing
Crelin on No All-Star Game in 2025
There have been three ECHL outdoor games, both of which have been hosted by the Toledo Walleye, coming at Fifth-Third Field. The first one came on December 29th, 2014, when Toledo hosted the Kalamazoo Wings. Toledo would then play two outdoor games during the 2020-21 season; the first game came on December 26th vs Kalamazoo, and the other one came on December 31st vs Indy Fuel.
Ya, did a call the other day. We’ve had two already and Toledo is looking at another one in the future but then there’s a couple other teams that are looking at it. I’m not certain it would be for next year cause those events take multiple years to plan out. Typically when you plan an outdoor game, your not just doing your ECHL game or two, your looking to get local high school and colleges involved as well perhaps other minor leagues or the women’s league there’s a lot of coordination because it’s such a big undertaking like that but I’ve had a number of team’s interested”
Crelin on the possibility of another outdoor game
Expansion/Attendance
Crelin mentioned that he wants the ECHL-AHL-NHL to have the same number of teams. At the moment, the NHL and AHL each have 32 teams, and ECHL is currently at 29 and has already announced number 30 for next season with the expansion to Greensboro, North Carolina.
We’ve already announced #30 in Greensboro and they’ll drop the puck next October and that’s our third stint in there cause we got inturpupted by AHL Hockey being in that hockey and even the NHL was in there before the Hurricanes moved into Raleigh. Good to get into that market, so that leaves us with two avaliable. One we’re on the preposous of wrapping up so hopefully we can announce that here in a few months and the other, lots of irons in the fire but I don’t know where we are going yet”
Crelin on expansions and the road to 32
However, despite having 29 teams, one of the concerns has been the Iowa Heartlanders. The Heartlanders, who came into the league during the 2021-22 season, have finished last in attendance in the last two seasons after finishing second to last in their inaugural season. When asked about this last season, Crelin mentioned that they brought in new ownership there, and the hope was that it would help solve the attendance problem, which hasn’t been the case so far.
“Look we still need to get the attendence up there, there’s nobody who says any different. I was very encouraged at the end of last year because they had a sellout in their last game and it shows that it can be done in that market but we still have plenty of work to do. Until we get that number increased, it’s going to continue to be a concern but we’re still humming along for now”
Ryan Crelin when asked if there’s any concern in Iowa
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