When the Icemen hockey club made its move to Jacksonville, there was quite a bit of skepticism regarding Jacksonville being a “hockey town.” Would it work here? Could it work here? When awarded the 2022 All-Star Game, it appeared to be working out just fine. If naysayers were still debating hockey’s survivability in the River City, as the old adage goes, numbers don’t lie. In the 2022-2023 season, the Icemen led the league in average attendance, averaging 7,749 folks showing up to see the team play on home ice. Adding to the Icemen’s growing collection of accolades are now multiple nominations for this year’s ECHL Team Awards.
The ECHL Team Awards is an annual league event that recognizes teams and individuals from them for their accomplishments during the season. Included in the award categories are things like Broadcaster of the Year, Marketing Team of the Year, and Theme Night of the Year. The Icemen are finalists in four awards categories this year. Those categories include Marketing Team of the Year, Group Sales -aggregate, Ticket Department of the Year – aggregate, and the Team Award of Excellence – aggregate category. Each category fields five finalist nominees, respectively.
The Team Award of Excellence?! It seems as if ice hockey is doing just fine in Jacksonville, Florida. The Icemen will still have to beat out four other teams in each area in order to take home any awards from the event in Las Vegas. However, getting recognized as one of the best in the league is a good way to respond to that “Hockey? In Jacksonville?” exchange I’m sure most of us are familiar with. Congratulations to everyone involved in the continued success of the Jacksonville Icemen and for steadily finding ways to say yes, it can and it does work here.
The ECHL’s 2022-2023 Team Awards takes place on June 28th in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event starts at 7:00pm ET and will be livestreamed on the league’s facebook page.
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