The IHL’s posthumous 75th anniversary: Millennium meltdown

After the roaring ’90s, the IHL went obsolete around the turn of the millennium. Lasting change was quick to come across minor league hockey.

When the IHL and AHL constituted Triple-A hockey’s two titans, the former’s domain was basically the NHL’s Western Conference territory. The latter overlapped with what was then the big league’s Eastern Conference range.

The bosses of both leagues made successful and unsuccessful line-crossing bids here and there. But that line was generally honored by default rather than enforcement or conscientiousness.

Nonetheless, Ohio, a perennial battleground on electoral maps, was often the epitome of AHL-IHL ambiguity. In 1952, the Cincinnati Mohawks defected from the AHL and promptly won five Turner Cups. In 1992, after 36 seasons of the AHL’s Barons, then two short-lived shots at the major leagues, Cleveland ended a 14-year break from pro hockey by welcoming the IHL’s Lumberjacks.

At the turn of the century, the state’s northwestern cornerstone nearly joined the club of mixed tracks. After two decades of honing their prospects in New York State’s Adirondack region, the Red Wings craved a new arena and new AHL base in Toledo’s suburbs.

That arrangement would have essentially emulated the longstanding Tigers-Mud Hens alliance, though it never materialized. As with its missed shot at Grand Rapids, Michigan, Dave Andrews’ league was not crossing that line just yet.

But in 1997, after five years at the Cincinnati Gardens, the IHL’s Cyclones sought newer, bigger opportunities at The Crown (now US Bank Arena, and former home of the WHA’s Stingers). In turn, the AHL let the Anaheim Mighty Ducks put their affiliate in the city’s older venue.

President Andrews insists the move was not meant “to (tick) off the IHL,” just like the Chicago Wolves never mean to vex their visitors during warm-ups. For its own sake and the league’s, Anaheim’s farm needed a sustainable location. The Gardens simply yielded the richest soil.

Nonetheless, friction ensued between Cincinnati’s front offices and fan bases.

“That pretty much guarantees failure for both groups,” then-IHL commissioner Bob Ufer acknowledged. “You can’t stay in a market like that.”

As it happened, both leagues would stay in Cincinnati for four years. But in that awkward window, IHL teams in markets big and small, mostly the latter, withdrew like Jenga pieces. To close his tenure, Ufer implemented a salary cap with the PHPA and tried to craft a revenue-sharing system among the teams.

“In this fashion, the players could continue to receive a decent wage, and all of the teams could operate on a profitable basis,” he said. “Unfortunately, it is very difficult to convince individual team owners to give up some of their autonomy, which has to occur in a league revenue-sharing situation. I was unsuccessful in my attempts to convince the owners of the importance of revenue sharing and to accept a restructuring of the league itself.”

Membership negligibly dwindled to 18 teams for Ufer’s final year in 1997-98. When successor Douglas Moss assumed office, it was down to 16.

Then in 1999, the IHL lost two of its new-wave brands plus the ultimate old guard. After 47 years, the Fort Wayne Komets took their basic black-and-orange threads and simple K emblem down to Double-A.

“I think, at the end of the day, a lot of the ownership in the league really kind of wanted to see Fort Wayne go away,” said Komets co-owner Michael Franke. “To put Fort Wayne on the marquee down in Orlando or Kansas City or Las Vegas, it was like, ‘Where in the heck is Fort Wayne?’”

The next year, the IHL shriveled from 13 to 11 teams. The Michigan K-Wings followed the Komets to the United League, reverting to the Kalamazoo Wings. In an equivalent self-demotion, the Long Beach Ice Dogs joined the West Coast League.

With that, Triple-A hockey evaporated from the Pacific Time Zone, and would not return to California for 15 years.

As the IHL’s team body melted and the NHL phased in its 1998-2000 expansion quartet, the ratio of independent-to-affiliated teams reversed. “The NHL sort of played off both leagues against one another in terms of setting up their different affiliations,” Ufer said, referencing relations with the AHL.

The Moss era was thus defined, in part, by a hasty effort to accept that the ’90s were ending and get more Y2K compliant. This was further illustrated by online initiatives to replace the SportsChannel void.

“I believe we were one of the first to ever stream a hockey game on the Internet,” Moss said. “Back then, this was unheard of.”

In some places, the effect of NHL partnerships was neutral. In others, it was a hex more than anything, as fans grew less inclined to unconditionally root for loud laundry.

By 2000-01, Cleveland and Detroit sported the starkest side effects. With the Minnesota Wild — who had just started alongside the Columbus Blue Jackets — as their third NHL affiliate in as many seasons, the Lumberjacks underwent an overwhelming roster overhaul. Nightly attendance dropped to nearly half of its average from 1999-2000, IHL all-time scoring leader Jock Callender’s last season.

First-year owner Hank Kassigkeit announced a new nickname to be determined later at preseason, only to relinquish custody at midseason. Following a February court settlement, the league oversaw the Lumberjacks, allowing them to finish the campaign.

Meanwhile, a 2015 NHL.com retrospective on the Vipers cited their alignment with Tampa Bay as a two-edged bane. Beloved players who had come to stick lost their jobs to Bolts prospects whose chemistry was not conducive to winning.

Accordingly, Oakland County outlets offered free tickets to passers-by. Few shoppers bothered, acting more fair-weather than the local self-proclamation Hockeytown suggested. Fifty-five years after the first Turner Cup Final pitted the Detroit Auto Club and Detroit Bright’s Goodyears, the dateline exemplified the IHL’s worst-case scenario.

Even if the league’s demise was not a fait accompli, the Vipers’ mortality was self-evident. They went from IHL-record attendance and five-digit average crowds five years running to 9,838 in 1999-00, then 5,163 the next season. They tumbled—and not in the entertaining way Ufer loved watching Komets mascot Icy do in Fort Wayne—from perennial leaders to the lower echelon.

In the neighboring league offices, Moss and company pressed on with poise. Four years after going dormant, conceding Phoenix was only big enough for the Coyotes, the Roadrunners brand prepared to resurface. Throughout the 2001 playoffs, billboards permeated the largest city in hockey’s native country, touting its upcoming IHL team. The Toronto Roadrunners were due to launch at the seasoned CNE Coliseum in 2002-03.

Ultimately, they would commence at the renamed Ricoh Coliseum in the 2003-04 AHL season. Within a week of Orlando usurping the Turner Cup from Chicago, Toronto all but relented on becoming the third Original Six metropolis to double as an IHL market.

Meanwhile, Detroit, Cleveland, and Cincinnati surrendered their future in the league. And on Monday, June 4, 2001, while most of the hockey world counted down to Game 5 of the Avalanche-Devils Stanley Cup Final, the IHL confirmed its own demise.

At best, it was facing single-digit membership for the first time since absorbing the CHL. After months of speculation and what Andrews remembers as “a lot of one-on-one conversations,” it was time to reverse the roles.

Every viable franchise could move to the AHL, except the stronger circuit limited ownership groups to one team. That posed a dilemma for the DeVos family, who oversaw the Blades, Griffins, and Solar Bears. The Michigan moguls chose Grand Rapids—their healthiest team, attendance-wise—leaving Kansas City and Orlando out.

As such, instead of growing to 29 teams for 2001-02, one shy of its ultimate goal of 30, the AHL fielded 27 the next fall.

Instant A-game

The IHL-AHL transition proved smooth for the survivors, who adroitly adapted to comply with the restrictions on fan-favorite veterans. Grand Rapids kept Travis Richards for five more seasons while Steve Maltais stayed in Chicagoland for another four years.

While a new affiliation with Atlanta meant loading up on Thrashers prospects, the Wolves reserved spots for veterans of two or more Chicago IHL seasons. Besides Maltais, they retained Rob Brown, Dallas Eakins, and two-time Turner Cup-winning coach John Anderson.

Those four kept familiar faces up front for their loyal fans and piloted the club to the 2002 Calder Cup. (Incidentally, Houston and Milwaukee followed as champions in 2003 and 2004, respectively. In the first 18 post-absorption seasons, IHL castaways won seven AHL crowns and 11 Western Conference titles.)

“I think it’s huge because the fans were used to having players around for a long stretch of time,” said Wolves general manager Wendell Young. “Usually we have a player two or three years now. Rarely can you hold on to a player for a long time.

“The identity process of the transition was huge for us. You have to pick and choose your veterans carefully.”

With that said, the surviving Triple-A league is not above allowing spurts of its former rival’s defining traits. It can be a comeback base for NHL veterans, like it was for Claude Lemieux in 2008-09, Sheldon Souray in 2010-11, and Wade Redden circa 2010-12.

In 2010, two transferred teams entertained a locally bred three-time Stanley Cup champion’s swan song. Winnipeg-born 15-year NHL veteran Mike Keane appended five seasons with the Moose, who later retired his jersey. Chicago native and eventual Hall of Famer Chris Chelios skated his last competitive shift as a Wolf.

Even after a league jump and four affiliation changes, the Wolves have barely changed their crest, colors (burgundy, gold, and black) or in-game presentations that beat out major-league teams on award ballots. Strictly FX — which has gone on to service the Super Bowl and several award shows — still provides the pyrotechnics while the PA system pumps out Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart” like clockwork.

The NFL’s big game has also had IHL alumni in the winning front office. Eagles president Don Smolenski, who in February 2018 got his first ring to cap his second decade in Philadelphia, was hired as their chief financial officer after serving the same post under Ufer. Smolenski’s bold choice to abandon the Arthur Andersen accounting firm and transition to sports management has also paid off in the form of Philadelphia media accolades, no small feat in a demanding town.

Other ex-IHL officers have settled into lower-level organizations, but are savoring success as well. Influential marketing director Mike McCall now works at Muskegon’s L.C. Walker Arena, which just marked its 60th hockey season and 10th with a junior team. In McCall’s first year as their president, the USHL’s Lumberjacks were named the 2018-19 organization of the year.

Apparently, all is forgiven for the man whose IHL tenure coincided with Muskegon’s first team’s departure for Cleveland, which has meanwhile rekindled its AHL love affair. After a Barons reboot went bust, the Monsters have thrived since 2007.

Chicago, Cleveland, and Grand Rapids are perennial top-10 attendance leaders. Manitoba was exemplary on that front throughout the 2000s, effectively justifying the return of the NHL’s Jets. Representatives from ex-IHL brands have been named the AHL’s executive of the year five times.

“Don Levin, the owner of the Chicago Wolves, is just as successful in the AHL as he was in the IHL,” marveled Moss. “He is so passionate about his team and the sport, and just does whatever it takes to win.

“Donna Tuttle and Dave Elmore are still going strong with the (ECHL’s) Utah Grizzlies, continuing their great success story.”

Moss and Andrews alike singled out Mark Chipman, the Manitoba owner and last IHL vice chairman of the board who spearheaded the 2001 absorption negotiations. Today, Chipman oversees the Moose and Jets as live-in affiliates.

“Mark is the finest person I have ever met in this business,” said Moss, “and I am proud to call him my friend.”

IHL double down

Before and after Fort Wayne and Kalamazoo, several long-abandoned IHL markets started anew in the Colonial/United League. With its geographic makeup, it was the closest one got to a bus-league IHL remake.

In 2007, it took that imitation to another level, moving its headquarters from Missouri to Oakland County, Michigan, reviving the IHL moniker and introducing a replica Turner Cup. More dateline-nickname combinations from the old days, including the Muskegon Lumberjacks, came back accordingly.

Six of the eight towns represented for at least one year in the new IHL maximized this throwback. But the league only carried six teams for two seasons, then seven in 2009-10.

Fort Wayne, winners of four championships in 47 Triple-A seasons, surpassed Cincinnati for the most Turner Cups in 2009. Franke took particular pride in that achievement, citing “a very strong and very bitter rivalry” with the Queen City.

After the Komets three-peated in 2010, however, it was once again curtains for the IHL. Economic turmoil afflicted its Michigan nucleus, and only Fort Wayne and Kalamazoo carried on.

With that said, they once again rival the Cyclones, Solar Bears, and Grizzlies, more proof that, as Monty Python might say, the Berry/Ufer/Moss-era IHL is not completely dead. Its decomposed particles have given substantial life to today’s NHL, AHL, and ECHL.

Between 1995 and 2017, The Show put new teams in seven ’90s IHL markets. For 2019-20, the AHL and ECHL each have seven teams representing IHL dropouts or replacements. Since 2005, all three circuits have broken regular-season ties with shootouts.

All NHL teams except the New York Rangers have a mascot. In Hershey, broadcast Zack Fisch watches youth players lead out the Bears, just like he once led out the Blades.

“I imagine those kids have similar memories of a surreal experience,” he said.

Fittingly, back in Fisch’s childhood locale, Kemper Arena is still in use, but as a comprehensive youth sports center. Meanwhile, in still-active venues and markets, incumbent franchises are actively remembering their IHL forebears.

This past October, the ECHL’s Atlanta Gladiators saluted the 1994 Turner Cup champion Atlanta Knights. In January, the Cleveland Monsters donned Lumberjacks threads for two games against Milwaukee. In Kalamazoo, only a precautionary suspension due to the Covid-19 pandemic could avert the Wings’ 39th annual Green Ice Game.

The AHL and ECHL use five ex-IHL arenas apiece. Two comprise both farm bases for the NHL’s 31st team in Vegas, which adopted the Wolves in 2017, then the Komets in 2018.

UNLV’s Thomas and Mack Center, which housed the IHL’s Thunder for six years, no longer harbors hockey. But it was a better bar-setter for Sin City’s first major-league enterprise than the smaller, less-attended Orleans Arena that later homed the ECHL’s Wranglers.

“Where (the Golden Knights) put (T-Mobile Arena) was ingenious,” said Franke, “right within walking distance of anybody staying on the Strip.”

Of the trio of markets that overlapped in the IHL for five years, he said, “It’s fun, but it’s very ironic when you look at the whole thing… at one time, we were vying against one another.”

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