The league will expand to 31 teams next season with the addition of Ft. Collins, Colorado.
By CRAIG POTTER
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — American Hockey League President Dave Andrews was in Rochester Friday night as part of his annual tour around the league’s cities.
AHL President and CEO Dave Andrews
The biggest announcement Andrews made was that the AHL will be expanding next season to Ft. Collins, Colorado to give them 31 franchises to match the NHL’s 31 franchises.
“Ft. Collins will be with the Colorado Avalanche,” Andrews said. “That frnachise is currently operating in the ECHL as the Colorado Eagles, and champions of the ECHL…That will move the Avalanche away from San Antonio and it opens San Antonio up for the St. Louis Blues to be their full affiliation next year.”
Andrews added that a team in the Western Conference will have 7 teams as one team will move to the Eastern Conference next season. The likely team would be the Cleveland Monsters as they are the most eastern team in the Western Conference and likely would come to the North Division to make it an 8-team division to match the 8-team Atlantic Division.
The league has two new teams this year, the Laval Rocket (Montreal) and the Belleville Senators (Ottawa). The New Jersey Devils relocated their franchise from Albany to Binghamton this season.
“We’ve had a good start,” Andrews said. “The building in Laval (Quebec) is spectacular. I was there for opening weekend and it was a good crowd and well received there. We open up in Belleville (Ontario) on Wednesday night. The support in Binghamton for the Devils has been strong.”
Andrews added that they are not counting Laval’s attendance figures this year, but even including those figures, the league still is ahead of last season at this time.
“Overall we’re in a really good place. It’s October and we’re ahead of last year (in attendance) across the league.”
When asked if he thought fans missed the ‘old time hockey’ with a lot of fights, Andrews said, “That’s a good question. I don’t know. I think the game has changed almost more this year, and I’m speaking more of watching NHL games on television than of watching the number of games in our league, at this point. I think the hockey is really entertaining. It’s really exciting to watch the speed of game and the skill of the game.
“At our level, the games are good. I think the fans miss the rough-tough stuff, the fighting. We haven’t seen a drop off in attendance. We have to grow with the times as well. You just couldn’t continue to have great big guys whose sole function in the game was fighting. We legislated to try to put an end to that…We certainly have put some restraints on players who are primarily fighters because they’re going to run out of opportunities to fight.
“We are evolving as the game evolves. I think the game is getting better.”