Ice Flyers Host SPHL Meetings On Pensacola Beach
By Bill Vilona, Ice Flyers Correspondent
The easiest sales pitch Ice Flyers owner Greg Harris made was to fellow team owners in the Southern Professional Hockey League.
A return week on Pensacola Beach? Sure.
Business meetings while families enjoy the sand and surf? Absolutely.
Mixing decision-making, season planning, rules decisions, with fun activities? All in.
“This will be the longest league meetings we’ve ever had,” said Harris, chuckling, as the SPHL league meetings that began Monday will end today. “But it’s great. What we all wanted to do was get together on the beach again in Pensacola and have some great meetings, but also enjoy some down time.
“When you have a team like us in the league, and a place like Pensacola to come to, then why not? For me, it means a lot because it provides a great way that I can host our league owners, our league partners and families, put some heads in beds on the beach and contribute to the local economic impact.”
For a second consecutive year, the SPHL meetings are being held at the Holiday Inn Resort on the beach. The SPHL office, led by commissioner Doug Price, along with the 11 team owners, vendor partners and families are staying in one place. The itinerary included a jet ski outing and boat trip to Sand Island and the Fort McRee area.
Harris knows the setting provided respite amid challenging times. Founded in 2004, the SPHL has endured the past three years of challenges with the ongoing coronavirus. It now has a geographic footprint of 11 teams in eight different states, stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes states.
The playoffs were cancelled in March 2020. In 2021, the northern half of the league did not play the season as the Ice Flyers won their fourth SPHL title.
The past season resembled more of a normal schedule, but also with Covid-19 issues affecting scheduling and rosters. The player pool last year was greatly limited by the unavailability of collegiate talent, forcing teams to scramble to fill rosters.
College players in Canada and the U.S. were provided an extra year of eligibility because of the previous season being cancelled and few players opted to leave for minor league teams. This year, the talent pool has greatly expanded.
“One year (2021), it was just survival, and we did,” Harris said. “Last year was like a step forward to normal. But when you look back at these past three years, we are just in a totally different world.”
Now, league owners are dealing with economic challenges heading into the 2022-23 season which begins in October. Gas prices have soared. Hotel costs, food costs, equipment costs have all gone up. The SPHL knows its fans may not have the same disposable income as recent years.
“We are in a totally different economy,” Harris said. “This is why it is so important for us to be focusing on the revenue and expense side of things as a league. Every business owner had to adapt in the last two years and break down their best practices and make adjustments to survive and progress forward.
“We all have changed our business practices to fit our market. I think the important thing is to focus on ways to cut costs without losing the impact.”
The Ice Flyers, who finished sixth in the regular-season standings, were eliminated April 16 by the Peoria Rivermen in a deciding quarterfinal round game. The Rivermen went on to defeat the Roanoke (Virginia) Rail Yard Dawgs to claim their first SPHL Presidents Cup title.
After an up-and-down season, Ice Flyers coach Rod Aldoff said he would utilize the next couple months to decide upon returning to coach the Ice Flyers this season.
Harris said Aldoff has a standing offer to stay on as long as he desires.
“Rod knows he has the green light whenever he wants,” Harris said. “He has done so many great things for our organization and really helped elevate our franchise to where it is now.
“Right now, he is set to come back, but it Is a long summer (for options). He knows he has a green light if he is able to find the right job at a higher level that suits him and his family.”
As the Ice Flyers enter their 14th season as a franchise and the league approaches its 20th anniversary, Harris said stability has been attained and the SPHL has succeeded while other minor league hockey entities have folded.
“We are very solid,” he said. “I still go back to some of the decisions we made as a board in 2020 during the Covid year and that really helped teams, I think we made some extremely smart decisions. We have seen the stability of our league.
“From the Ice Flyers perspective, things went very well last year. We were able to get community support, local government support and make some strong decisions to have us thrive through it.”
