ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 1996 TAG: 9603200029
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Jack Bogaczyk
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
The Roanoke Express is heading into dangerous territory. It's going on the road.
The Express ended its third home regular season Tuesday night with a 4-3 shootout loss to South Carolina. Roanoke finishes the season with a weekend trip to Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C. After an 8-5 start away from home, the Express is 4-13-3 after breathing the bus fumes.
You would think a team that has to go on the road to practice ought to be accustomed to a potholed existence. The East Coast Hockey League playoffs begin next week, and guess where the Express mostly will be chasing the Riley Cup - on the road.
For the first-round playoff dates, which the Express should have at the Roanoke Civic Center, a gun show will send the club packing. It's just another shot for coach Frank Anzalone's team.
Wouldn't you think the Express' management would have booked the weekend dates for playoff potential at the civic center? Really, only 16 of 21 ECHL teams make the playoffs. That means you have a 76 percent chance of making it.
Couldn't the Express have had those dates before the gun show pulled the trigger? If not, then someone has to ask why an arena's primary tenant isn't getting the priority on dates. Of course, there have been negotiations between civic center management and the Express front office that appropriately could have ended with a roundhouse.
The Express' management seems busy trying to put a new ECHL team in Biloxi. Express president John Gagnon is visiting Mississippi this week to push the club's season-ticket drive, and there's nothing wrong with that. He owns the club. He has another success waiting to happen, and Biloxi, a booming tourist market, is less of a hockey gamble than was Roanoke, where the ice had melted so many times.
However, the question many Express fans are asking - and it's a legitimate one - is whether Gagnon will spend so much time selling Biloxi that Roanoke will suffer. He has said that will not happen, but if Biloxi gets a solid NHL or IHL affiliation before Roanoke manages that feat, Express management deserves more than raised eyebrows from loyal ticket buyers.
Express general manager Pierre Paiement isn't supposed to be involved in the operation of the Mississippi club, but because of his friendship and professional relationship with Gagnon, that's an issue that won't go away. Maybe it shouldn't.
If Paiement is involved in Biloxi, then who's running the Express? If Paiement isn't involved in Mississippi, why was he huddling with known Biloxi coaching hopeful Bruce Boudreau, the former Fort Wayne Komets boss, in the press box at a recent Express game?
Or, was Paiement interviewing Boudreau for the Express' coaching job?
Rumors continue to swirl among ECHL coaches and executives that Anzalone - fed up with having to coach and conduct player procurement for a franchise that has broken promises of practice ice and NHL affiliation - will pack his bags at season's end.
Anzalone is said possibly to be considering a move back to college hockey, where he guided Lake Superior State to the NCAA title in 1988. ECHL limitations on veteran players will reduce the current talent pool next year, and battling for players as well as with players has seemed to wear on Anzalone this season. He also has been booed, and more in his own arena despite providing a winning club.
The Express' marketing efforts have been impressive. The club is averaging 5,700 spectators a game - seventh in the ECHL in the league's smallest metropolitan market - and almost 6,300 if you subtract Tuesday nights. Those figures couldn't have been imagined two years ago. However, future competition is going to come from more than Biloxi.
Who says the ECHL won't play in Peoria? It will next season, when the IHL's Rivermen become the ECHL's 23rd team. Greenville, S.C., and Trenton, N.J., are scheduled to join in 1997-98. Evansville, Ind., isn't too far off.
Wilmington, Del., Shreveport, La., and Memphis also have inquired about ECHL membership. The Road to the Riley Cup? That would be Interstate 10, which draws a straight line through most of the South Division - including Biloxi - from Louisiana to the Atlantic Ocean.
The ECHL, already the largest minor league in hockey, says it wants to expand to match the number of teams in the NHL (26). Art Clarkson, chairman of the ECHL's expansion committee, said the goal is to have every ECHL team affiliated with an NHL club.
That would be welcome in Roanoke, where the Express may have the Biloxi blues, but still no home ice, nor NHL help, and a good coach who may be taking the bus to more than the playoffs.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 linesby CNB