Despite cheap shot, ECHL no goon league, former chief says

By Rob Miech

Thursday, May 22, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Teams fought during warm-ups. There were line-on-line brawls. A goalie conked a referee over the head with his stick. A beer-fueled fan hopped onto the ice to battle a player.

The infant days of the ECHL or the filming of “Slap Shot”?

Comparisons have been made between the thuggish 1977 cult hockey flick and the league the Las Vegas Wranglers are trying to conquer, by a veteran Wrangler, no less.

Chris Ferraro hasn’t played since Robin Gomez blindsided him with a cheap shot three months ago. Ferraro thinks the image of the 20-year-old league also took a hit.

He said the ECHL had come a long way to clean up its reputation as a “goon league.”

“In the beginning, it was noted for developing goalkeepers and tough guys,” Wranglers coach and general manager Glen Gulutzan said. “There were a lot of tough hockey players scrapping their way up.”

It was “harder nosed,” Gulutzan said, but it wasn’t “Slap Shot,” which featured a hard-core league of hooligans that caused Rorschach-like red ice and frightened away families.

Pat Kelly, whose name is on the ECHL championship trophy, agreed, and he ought to know.

Kelly, 72, played in the old Eastern League, and he can’t say its name without qualifying it as ancient. The scenes that opened this story were from his playing days.

He once helped an opponent who had thrown a stick at a fan escape a police gantlet by hiding him in a large stick bag. Twice, Kelly went into the stands after fans who had showered his bench with beer.

In Long Island, N.Y., neither time nor penalties were called. He whacked someone a few times and jumped down the stairs in time for his shift.

That’s the behavior Kelly insisted on eliminating when he accepted the post as commissioner of the East Coast Hockey League in 1988.

Only five teams played that first season, and a Virginia businessman, Henry Brabham, owned three. Kelly demanded that his decisions, such as a ban on replacing suspended players, were final.

Those few owners, who wanted four-hour games to sell kegs of beer, bristled. Kelly won.

“I tell players today that I was probably tougher than a lot of commissioners,” Kelly said from his home in North Carolina. “But by doing that, the NHL put a tag on us.”

He wanted legitimacy with the game’s elite league, whose teams would feel comfortable sending top draft picks to develop and not get “punked” in the ECHL.

He envisioned feeding the NHL with broadcasters, linesmen, referees and trainers, not just players.

Kelly did not want violence to keep fathers and mothers from returning to games with their sons and daughters. He thinks the Gomez-Ferraro incident was an anomaly that can happen at every level of a physical game.

“I’m sorry Chris Ferraro feels the way he does,” Kelly said. “But the ECHL was never a goon league.”

Still, a rowdy element existed those first few seasons in Alabama, Florida and Louisiana.

“The appetite was there in the South from the fans,” said Brian McKenna, commissioner of the ECHL since 2002, from his office in Princeton, N.J. “Largely, this league doesn’t have stories of line brawls or players into the stands. It predates our league.”

Andy Van Hellemond, a former director of NHL officials, continued to clamp down on extracurricular activity when he replaced Kelly in 1996.

“He made sure we operated as a developmental league, focused on skill, skating and speed, as opposed to anything else,” McKenna said. “I think it’s also the evolution of the game. The use of enforcers has decreased.”

McKenna oversaw the addition of teams from the defunct West Coast Hockey League and expansion, which included Las Vegas. Because of its national flavor, the league officially became simply the ECHL.

It bills itself as the Double-A level of hockey, which feeds the American Hockey League, or Triple-A. Most ECHL teams are affiliated with NHL organizations.

The Calgary Flames are the parent club of the Wranglers.

“You really have a major league, Triple-A and Double-A,” said Gulutzan. “Ten years ago, you didn’t have that. You had all independent contracts.”

Kelly is the league’s commissioner emeritus. His name has adorned the league’s playoffs and championship trophy since 1997, and he hands the Kelly Cup to the title winners every spring.

“What a thrill,” he said. “Not many guys get a cup named after them in their lifetime.”

He is especially thrilled that the ECHL has sent 355 players to the NHL.

“I hoped it would someday be a great Double-A league,” Kelly said. “I think we’ve achieved that.”