The ECHL has two expansion teams this season – the Bloomington Bison and Tahoe Knight Monsters – with another on the way in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Succeeding in the ECHL, which will grow to 30 franchises when Greensboro enters in 2025, isn’t easy. 

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Few teams have consistently figured it out, namely the three-time defending-champion Florida Everblades; the Toledo Walleye, who made it to the conference or Kelly Cup Finals in each of the last three seasons; and the Idaho Steelheads, who had the best regular season in ECHL history and then reached the 2023 Kelly Cup Finals.

Since none of the other teams have brought me on as a team president – and I can think of two or three that could, and have, done worse – I’ll simply share my knowledge with the ECHL’s newest teams.

It may be too late in some respects for Bloomington and Tahoe, but Greensboro should pay attention.

Here’s some advice about how to achieve success in the ECHL:

Get A Strong NHL Affiliation 

The goal in the ECHL is to get to 32 franchises, so there can be one Double-A affiliation for every NHL team. But not all affiliations are equal.

Some NHL teams are known for being excellent parent clubs for ECHL teams. The Detroit Red Wings, Edmonton Oilers, Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins and New Jersey Devils come to mind. 

Washington affiliates have won the most ECHL championships with five, though the last came in 2013 when the Reading Royals hoisted the Kelly Cup. The most recent trip to the finals by a Capitals affiliate came in 2021, when the South Carolina Stingrays made it.

Other NHL teams haven’t shown they’re particularly invested in stocking the ECHL with prospects or doing their ECHL team particular favors when it comes to roster building. The Columbus Blue Jackets, New York Rangers, Ottawa Senators, Vancouver Canucks and St. Louis Blues are examples.

But just because an NHL team doesn’t show much passion for the ECHL at a particular period in time, it certainly can change – especially if there’s an overhaul of front-office personnel or philosophies.

There are a myriad of reasons it’s important for an ECHL franchise to have a strong relationship with an NHL affiliate and, of course, its American Hockey League team. The obvious is that the ECHL club can get stocked with legitimate NHL prospects who just need seasoning. But it goes beyond that. For example, a key recruiting tool for ECHL teams is promising free agents that if they sign, they’ll get a spot in an NHL or AHL training camp.

Roster: The @NJDevils have reassigned forward Dylan Wendt from the @UticaComets to Adirondack!

Pres. by Moving Made EZ! pic.twitter.com/dHZpYFZeGq

— Adirondack Thunder (@ECHLThunder) October 24, 2024

Players in the ECHL who are on NHL or AHL contracts count as only $525 against the weekly $14,600 salary cap, regardless of their actual salaries, whereas the lowest salary an ECHL-contracted player can make is $530 per week. 

So, it’s not uncommon for ECHL teams to get their AHL affiliate to sign players expressly to send them to the ECHL and alleviate the burden of the ECHL team’s salary cap. Yep, you read that correctly: By getting more talented players, an ECHL team can actually have less of an issue with the salary cap.

More than anything, everyone in an affiliation – from the NHL team, to the AHL team, to the ECHL team – needs to be on the same page. Few things are as frustrating for an ECHL team as having good players called away to the AHL, just so they can vegetate in the stands during games, rather than play, because the AHL team wanted extra bodies just in case.

I’ve seen multiple affiliations fall apart because the ECHL team had a pivotal game and decided to start an ECHL-contracted goalie, when the NHL or AHL affiliate wanted them to play their guy – even if that goalie wasn’t as talented or able to handle the stakes at hand. This isn’t to say the NHL or AHL team is wrong in that situation, but ECHL teams want, and need, to win, too, and communication and advance planning are paramount. It just doesn’t always happen.

I’m a little concerned about Bloomington because it is aligned with the Rangers, who’ve never had an ECHL affiliate go to the Kelly Cup Finals and didn’t have a very productive relationship last season with the Cincinnati Cyclones. 

Tahoe is with the Vegas Golden Knights, whose history of supporting the ECHL has been all over the map. 

The Fort Wayne Komets won the 2021 Kelly Cup as a Vegas affiliate but got little help from the Golden Knights, who did better in supporting the Savannah Ghost Pirates the last couple of years.

Have Toughness On The Roster 

Hockey is becoming more and more of a finesse game, but at the ECHL level, toughness still is valuable. The best teams are physical in the corners, have defensemen capable of bruising opponents and have a few guys willing to hunker down in front of the net and wreak some havoc.

The reality is, ECHL teams aren’t able to string together the tic-tac-toe passing plays you see in the NHL or AHL. ECHL players can make the first two passes, but the third tends to slide into oblivion. Often, that’s because someone gets knocked off the puck by a physical opposing player.

It’s easy for ECHL teams, while building their rosters, to get too caught up in trying to sign accomplished scorers, but the reality is that those guys are easier to find than physical players who can skate and not hurt you in the defensive zone. That’s why we see so many skilled players bounce around from ECHL team to ECHL team, while blue-collar players can stick around for longer stretches.

Now, let’s talk about enforcers. 

🚨 TURCOTTE 🚨@YanickTurc joins the scoring and we're within 1!

4-3 Heartlanders pic.twitter.com/s3baOP6VnO

— Fort Wayne Komets (@FWKomets) October 19, 2024

As is the case at the higher levels of hockey, the ECHL office has been trying to phase out fighting to make the games safer and more family friendly. Players who fight more than 10 times in a season get suspended, a rule instituted in 2019 to align with an AHL rule.

But ECHL teams still are seeing a lot of value in having someone protect their stars, which is why the likes of Yanick Turcotte, Daniel Amesbury, Nico Blachman and Kyle Neuber still are employed. Some ECHL enforcers are among the highest-paid players on their teams.

It’s important to remember the business aspect of it for ECHL teams. 

At this level, many fans still expect fighting. Teams that don’t have adequate toughness may see a downtick in ticket sales. ECHL teams generally are small businesses and can’t afford that. Another way to look at it is this: If an ECHL team doesn’t win many games, it had better at least put on a show. That means toughness.

Have A Coach Who Can Navigate The ECHL

There’s a reason coaching in the ECHL is considered such good preparation for the higher levels: Coaches here don’t have giant hockey operations departments, so they must deal with seemingly every conceivable situation.

Many of them they’d probably like to forget, whether it’s staying in a hotel with mouse droppings and bed bugs (yes, this has happened) or getting stranded on the road with the broken-down bus (happens all the time) or having only 14 players on hand for games (happens more than you’d think).

The learning curve of coaching in the ECHL is high. Call-ups wreak havoc on rosters every week. Teams regularly play three games in three nights, with travel in between, and it’s incredibly taxing for everyone. It also leaves almost no practice time to shore up issues.

Some teams don’t have the money to pay for the technology that’s commonplace with every NHL and AHL team, meaning they have to break down film while riding the bus like it’s 1997, while also working the phones to try and find a capable free agent who’s willing to drive through the night to make a game in locations, such as Wheeling, West Virginia, or Coralville, Iowa.

For many ECHL teams, the coaches are doing all of the player personnel work, meaning they have to worry about getting immigration work visas approved, arrange for housing and manage injured reserve and the salary cap.

Smart teams hire coaches who have experience dealing with the minutiae of the ECHL. 

While Pat Mikesch took Toledo to the conference finals last season, his first season after years in junior hockey, he was more the exception than the rule. 

The Adirondack Thunder’s Pete MacArthur jumped directly from playing in the ECHL to coaching and has had success – he took the Thunder to the Eastern Conference Finals last season – but other young coaches, such as Chad Costello and Jordan Lavalee-Smotherman, fizzled out the last couple of years.

Tahoe hired Alex Loh as its coach, and while he never made it past the first round of the playoffs as the Thunder’s head coach, he certainly knows the difficulties of ECHL coaching. 

Bloomington’s coach, Phillip Barski, had never been a head coach at this level, but he had two seasons as an assistant with the Greenville Swamp Rabbits, so we’ll see what he can do managing it all with an expansion team.

Greensboro’s chances of succeeding would improve with an experienced coach at this level.

Shrug Off Bad Officiating 

I generally think ECHL referees and linesmen do a good job, but officiating at this level can be frustratingly inconsistent. It’s just reality, and getting angry about it is a waste of energy. Winning teams fight through it and make their own luck.

There are justifiable reasons officiating in the ECHL is a hot-button issue: The NHL and AHL have grabbed the most talented officials; ECHL arenas aren’t outfitted with, and teams don’t have the funds to pay for, the video replay capabilities that exist at the higher levels; and people conveniently forget that this is a developmental circuit for officials, as much as it is for the players.

When it comes to officiating, few things are as frustrating as the goaltender interference calls, or lack thereof, that have decided playoff games and caused fans absolute fits. It seems that a goal waved off in one period is allowed in the next. There’s a lot of blame to go around on this. 

The NHL hasn’t properly passed down the standard for this call, which isn’t to say the NHL has totally figured out goalie interference. And the ECHL’s officiating managers can improve – in goalie interference and other calls – at making sure there’s more consistency around the league.

As a writer covering the ECHL, I’m flat out tired of writing about officiating – and I’m getting paid to do it. I can’t imagine what the fans think at this point. 

As for the ECHL teams, I get their frustrations, but I’ve unfortunately seen more than a few unfortunate off-ice exchanges between players and ECHL referees or supervisors who are just trying to do their thankless jobs.

The best course of action is this: Don’t expend brain power griping about calls that already have happened. If we don’t expect perfection from NHL officiating, we can’t possibly expect it in the ECHL. Work on the penalty kill or something else.

Carry Three Goalies 

It’s not necessarily easy to do this because of salary cap constraints and because it’s a tough sell to a goalie to be on the roster and not get many opportunities to play. But having a third goalie makes so many things easier, if you can swing it.

More and more, ECHL teams are carrying two goalies on either NHL or AHL contracts. That part makes sense. There are only so many spots for goalies in the NHL and AHL, and those teams want their prospects playing, so they wind up in the ECHL.

And that’s great for the ECHL teams. They get talented netminders who help put butts in the seats. But here’s the rub: They get called up often.

Having a spare goalie on hand, who’s on an ECHL contract, alleviates worry if someone is called up, gives teams an extra body for practices and helps keep all the goalies fresh. 

And the history of the ECHL is littered with stories of teams going into the playoffs, losing one or two goalies to call-ups and then having to scour the Southern Professional Hockey League or Federal Prospects Hockey League for a capable body. Sometimes, they end up only with an emergency backup goalie, someone who’s playing in a local beer league or is the team’s equipment manager or something.

The last thing any team wants is to have its season on the line and not have a trustworthy goalie. The best way to avoid it is to carry a third goalie all season.

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