By CRAIG POTTER
Dave Andrews makes his annual visit to watch the Amerks during Friday night’s game.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. – American Hockey League President Dave Andrews made his annual visit to Rochester on Friday night on his way to Toronto for the NHL Hall of Fame ceremonies.
When asked what are the biggest challenges and concerns facing the AHL right now, Andrews said, “That’s a pretty good question. I’d like to think that we’re in a pretty good place.
“We’ve gone through a lot of changes in the last couple of years with the move to California and down into Arizona. We changed our footprint quite a bit. I think we’ve taken a lot of forward steps in the league in the last few years, and I’m hopeful that we’re kind of stabilizing.”
Last season the 5 new teams in California and the 6th team in Tucson played 8 fewer games than the rest of the league. That precedent also will take place this season.
“Those (6) teams are playing a 68-game schedule and the other teams are playing a 76-game schedule,” said Andrews. “Surprisingly…we’re not getting a whole lot of push-back from either our clubs or our fans. It worked well for those West Coast teams for a number of reasons.
“The rest of our clubs are looking at whether they’d like to reduce the schedule a little bit or not. I don’t think it’s going to be a big thing. Last year when you look at it from about Christmas and beyond, everybody played about the same number of games. The variance between the 68 and 76 seem to happen early in the season.”
The NHL will be expanding to Las Vegas and there has been talk of adding an AHL team for their affiliate, but no decision has been made, to date.
“I suspect within the next few weeks we’ll have a better understanding of where they’re looking to go with their affiliation,” Andrews said. “I think we’ll be at 31 teams next year.”
Andrews also was queried about the NHL draft of being 18, if there were any discussion about raising it to 19 so players in junior hockey could come to the AHL affiliate rather than returning to his junior hockey team for his final year of eligibility if he did not make the NHL roster.
“There’s a lot of discussion about that in the media,” Andrews said. “The NHL draft age is not something that the American Hockey League is responsible for…Nothing on the horizon…The arrangement between the NHL and Canadian Major Junior Hockey League … is to protect the player development model in Canada.”
1966 historic year
Andrew’s visit reminded this writer that back in 1966 Rochester made history as being the first city to be headquarters for two minor leagues. The city already was headquarters of the AHL, and became headquarters for International League baseball as well.
In that year the IL welcomed a new president, George Sisler Jr. He succeeded Tommy Richardson as president, and he was a former General Manager of the Rochester Red Wings.
Sisler was the IL President from 1966-77 when he took over as GM of the new Columbus franchise.
Jack Riley was the AHL president from 1964-66. He also was a former GM of the Rochester Americans (1959-64).
Video
Dave Andrews interview – https://youtu.be/52Roj2IOj5o