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The structure of minor-league professional hockey in the States is a bit confusing and is constantly changing as teams open, fold, and relocate. I thought it might be a good idea to provide a quick-and-dirty rundown, at least as it pertains to the Scoring Chances series and the characters you’ll meet along the way.
The National Hockey League (NHL) has thirty teams, and each team has an affiliate American Hockey League (AHL) team. The primary purpose of the AHL is to serve as a development league for the NHL, allowing promising players and recent acquisitions/draft picks to improve their hockey skills and physical conditioning. Teams can also “call up” players from their AHL affiliate when necessary, to replace injured players or to give valuable playing experience to potential prospects.
Players on the NHL team can also be sent down to the AHL, if it is deemed a good idea for the player’s individual development.
The ECHL or East Coast Hockey League, which is the league where the Scoring Chances series takes place, is a double-minor league, or the league directly below the AHL. There are currently twenty-eight teams in the ECHL, and most are affiliated with an AHL team—with an eventual goal of adding two more teams so it is even in number with the NHL/AHL. There have been cases when one ECHL team is a shared affiliate between two NHL teams.
Confusing? All you really need to know is that the ECHL is a feeder league for the AHL, which is a feeder league for the NHL. In the Scoring Chances series, all the NHL/AHL affiliates are correct as of time of publication, but it should be noted that these can change quite often in between seasons. All ECHL teams, their locations and their affiliates in the Scoring Chances series are fictional (with the exception of the Cincinnati Cyclones).
Like the AHL, players can be “called up” and “sent down” as necessary.
It’s important to note two main differences between the ECHL and the other two leagues. The ECHL is not dependent on a draft, so coaches are free to choose their own roster. Anyone can try out for a spot. The other difference is money. And this is a big one—ECHL players generally make about $12,000 per year (plus housing expenses), compared to about $40,000 a year for your average player in the AHL. Of course, the amount is much higher for an NHL player—but not quite, say, the level of your average NFL player.
In the first book in this series, Breakaway, Jared refers to the ECHL as Easy Come, Hard to Leave, which is a moniker I learned from reading Sean Pronger’s excellent book, Journeyman: The Many Triumphs (and Even More Defeats) Of a Guy Who’s Seen Just About Everything In the Game of Hockey. I cannot recommend this book enough, and reading the hilarious and informative anecdotes of Sean Pronger’s career—played primarily in the ECHL—is what made me want to write about minor-league hockey players in the first place. The book also provided a lot of insight and ideas for the character that would become Jared Shore. Like Sean Pronger, Shore is a veteran “journeyman” who’s spent his long career playing for a multitude of teams and wearing a lot of terrible jerseys along the way.
If you’re interested in how minor professional hockey came to be a thing in the southern United States, I also highly recommend Hockey Night in Dixie: Minor Pro Hockey in the American South, by Jon C. Stott. This book proved to be an excellent resource and made me appreciate the tenacity of those determined to sell ice hockey to Southerners obsessed with college football (or, in my family’s case, college basketball).
I have tried to keep true to the rules of hockey, both in game play and administrative operations within the ECHL—without being a stickler. Any glaring errors (or convenient road-trip stopovers) I blame on artistic license.