Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 23, 1995 TAG: 9508230050
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was anything but a bloodless coup. It has more to do with what the ECHL seems to do best - expansion.
Pat Kelly is old enough to be Rick Adams' father. The neckties they wore Tuesday as two days of Roanoke Express-hosted ECHL meetings began said where they were coming from. Kelly, who will be 60 in three weeks, wore paisley. Adams, 32, wore Sesame Street characters.
Adams and Kelly are the Bert and Ernie of the ECHL. Adams, after a year as the league's vice president of operations, is now president and chief executive officer. Kelly remains commissioner and boss of the hockey operations in a league that spans 11 states with 21 teams. Both numbers are destined to mushroom in the next three years.
``There's no doubt we needed someone in that position,'' said Kelly, whose responsibilities were halved. ``Two years ago we were already up to 19 teams. I couldn't be all places or do all the things I had to do. I was working 12 to 14 hours a day. It was a case of deciding what was most important, and then not doing the other things.''
It wasn't that long ago - 1988 - that Kelly and Vinton oilman Henry Brabham sat together in the LancerLot discussing the prospective league. ``The meetings used to be simple,'' Kelly recalled. ``It was Henry, me and two other guys. [Tuesday] morning, I guess we had about 45 people in the room.
``It's amazing. When we had five teams at the start, we just wanted to get to six. We never envisioned getting to 10. In five years we had 19. In a few more years, we may have 27 or 28.''
When Adams was promoted in May, it was portrayed in some ECHL outposts as a demotion for Kelly. The truth was that Kelly was a big enough man to realize and admit that the job had become too big for him. In fact, it was Kelly who recommended Adams to be the ECHL's CEO. Each has a new, three-year contract. Each answers to the executive committee of the ECHL Board of Governors.
``My job is the business side,'' Adams said. ``What I want to do is help the league expand, but do it prudently, with solid ownership in good markets. We want this league to be prosperous for many years, but we don't intend just to live on expansion. Pat handles the hockey side. There's plenty to keep us both busy.''
Adams, who graduated from Rutgers Law School last year, grew up watching the AHL's Hershey Bears before heading west for his undergraduate degree at UCLA. Kelly also is a man of letters. He coached in the NHL, WHA, AHL, IHL, EHL, SHL and ACHL. Kelly's 849 wins as a professional coach was a record only eclipsed a couple of years ago by Scotty Bowman, coach of the Detroit Red Wings.
Adams won't have any problems understanding when Kelly talks a game he coached for 24 consecutive years before being goaded by Brabham into becoming the ECHL's boss. Adams' resume includes coaching staff work with the Philadelphia Flyers and at Spokane in the Western Hockey League.
His elevation is recognition that the ECHL, as it proved during the off-season in territorial skirmishes with the American Hockey League, intends to only get bigger and better. The league adds Mobile, Ala., Lafayette, La., and Jacksonville, Fla., this season and Louisville returns. Greenville, S.C., and maybe more cities will join in 1996-97.
It's like the Cookie Monster.
``Our budget for league operations this year is better than triple what it was three years ago,'' Kelly said. ``The league office [moved to Charlotte, N.C., from Vinton several years ago] will have nine people this year. It was three two years ago - me, my wife as the secretary and Doug Price doing statistics. It's hard to believe we managed to run a 19-team league as efficiently as we did.''
And in teaming Adams and Kelly, the ECHL has realized that two heads are better than one.
by CNB