Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501300026
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RALPH BERRIER JR. STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's an apt comparison. Like the perennial vine that covers the ground and wraps itself around virtually every telephone pole in the Sun Belt, hockey is a foreign import that has taken root in the South and is becoming a part of the landscape.
Last week, the East Coast Hockey League granted an expansion franchise to Mobile, Ala. Next, the league is planning to expand to other hockey ``hotbeds'' such as Pensacola, Fla., and Columbia, S.C.
``The South is certainly opening itself up for hockey,'' said Pat Kelly, the ECHL's commissioner. ``There are many fine [Southern] cities out there that want hockey.''
The National Hockey League has established a Southern beachhead with the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Miami-based Florida Panthers and has watched the Minnesota North Stars relocate to Dallas.
For years, Southern cities such as Charlotte, N.C., Atlanta and Jacksonville, Fla., have been among the fastest-growing in the country. All the major sports leagues - major-league baseball, NFL, NBA and NHL - have expanded to the region in the past seven years.
As the region grows and the population booms, the South becomes more cosmopolitan, as non-Southerners move here and bring with them their traditionally non-Southern interests. Like ice hockey.
It's still a trifle strange to imagine a winter sport being played on the Gulf of Mexico, but that will be the case next season when the still-nameless Mobile franchise takes the ice. A few folks at the recent ECHL meetings offered a couple of derisive monikers, the best of which may have been the Mobile Homes.
(Here's a marketing suggestion for the folks in 'Bama, who'll need a way to attract the hibernating football fans: Tell them the Mobile-Birmingham rivalry is the Alabama-Auburn of the ECHL.)
Hockey also is catching on with native Southerners, who are adding their own flourishes to the sport.
Take Tuesday's ECHL All-Star Game in Greensboro, N.C. There was no version of ``O, Canada'' sung before the game, even though half the players were Canadian. Later, when a Garth Brooks song was pumped through the Greensboro Coliseum's monstrous sound system, the crowd sang along. The fans continued to sing even after the music stopped.
Is hockey really that big in the South? Consider this: On Jan.14, the Charlotte Checkers drew their second sellout crowd of the season when 9,570 fans packed Independence Arena. Across town that same night, the Charlotte Hornets were playing at home against the Chicago Bulls.
UNQUOTE: Eric Margenau, the majority owner of the Mobile franchise, still is steaming over his failed bid to buy the Salem Buccaneers baseball club last year.
Margenau had reached an agreement with the team's owner, Kelvin Bowles, to buy the club for approximately $2 million. The deal was shot down when Salem's city council, fearing the uncertainty of turning over the club to an out-of-town owner, refused to transfer the lease on city-owned Municipal Field from Bowles to Margenau.
``For the record, I don't have any comment on any of that,'' Margenau said. ``Nothing I say would be of any value to you. It would be nothing you could print, anyway.''
REPLACEMENT MVP: Two weeks ago, Toledo's Jay Neal wasn't even on the West roster for the ECHL All-Star Game. On Tuesday night, he was voted the game's most valuable player.
Neal, who had two goals and an assist in the West's 6-5 victory over the East, was named to the team after Toledo's original representatives - Rick Corriveau and Rick Judson - were sidelined with injuries. Because he was named to the squad so late, Neal wasn't even in the All-Star program.
MISSING LINK: Legendary brawler Link Gaetz, who terrorized the ECHL for a short time last season, may have played his last professional hockey game.
Skating with the Central Hockey League's San Antonio Iguanas, Gaetz was suspended indefinitely by the league for a helicopter swing and slash that broke the arm of Dallas Freeze wing Frank LaScalla in December.
It was the latest and probably last incident of a pro career that has been marked by ugly incidents on and off the ice. The volatile Gaetz, an admitted alcoholic, once threw a television set out of a hotel window in Peoria, Ill., and was convicted of disorderly conduct for shooting out the window of a church.
Selected by the Minnesota North Stars in the second round of the 1988 entry draft, Gaetz played in 65 NHL games. An alcohol-related car accident robbed him of his fine motor skills and reflexes. Gaetz told The Hockey News he is considering retiring from the sport, returning to school and possibly studying law enforcement.
by CNB