close

Outdoor minor-league hockey team folds for poor attendance

3 min read

The minor-league Williamsport Outlaws are on thin ice after the franchise that played its entire home schedule outdoors suffered from poor attendance.

Federal Hockey League commissioner Don Kirnan said Wednesday the league assumed ownership of the Outlaws after the team cancelled its final home game Monday.

Organizers had called the Outlaws the first modern pro hockey team in North America to play its entire home schedule outside. The Outlaws skated on a regulation rink built atop Bowman Field, the oldest minor league ballpark in Pennsylvania and home of the Single-A Williamsport Crosscutters, a Phillies affiliate.

The rest of the Outlaws schedule had the team playing on the road. Kirnan said it’s unclear yet how a team will be assembled to play those games.

The Outlaws ended up with an average attendance of 200 or 300 per game, Kirnan said. The opening game on an unseasonably balmy October night set the Federal Hockey League attendance record with 3,447 – many fans showing up in shorts and T-shirts with the game-time temperature in the mid-60s.

The boxscore for what ended up being the final home game Saturday, a 5-2 loss to Danville, listed a crowd of 867. Saturday also happened to be the opening day of the NHL’s lockout-shortened season.

“It was a great start, and a great job promoting” the opening game, Kirnan said in a phone interview. “The second and third games were pretty good, but in the end there wasn’t enough fan support.”

Glitches caused obstacles before a puck was ever dropped – warm October weather aside.

First there was a problem with the ice compressor, then a delay with the ice machine. It resulted in the rink not being game-ready until the morning of the Oct. 24 opener.

The Williamsport Sun-Gazette reported Wednesday the city was at least temporarily stuck with utility bills of more than $36,000, the result of several months of unpaid bills by the Outlaws and the nonprofit group that operated Airmen Pond at Bowman Field.

A message was left Wednesday by the Associated Press for Mayor Gabriel Campana, who had been a strong proponent of the outdoor team. Local organizers hoped interest might lead to the building of an indoor ice arena in a city seeing economic growth as a hub for natural gas drilling companies.

At a City Council committee meeting Tuesday, Campana praised the Outlaws franchise for being involved in the community, the Sun-Gazette reported. He said the rink gave families and youth a skating venue when it wasn’t used for hockey.

“We planted a seed,” Campana said. “Hockey is not my first priority … running a city is.”

Kirnan acknowledged there were differences with the city over the utility bill, and that the team “probably owes” some of the utilities or other bills to the nonprofit group as well. He said the Outlaws had about a $250,000 operating loss, but a positive economic impact on the area.

The Williamsport franchise had moved from the New York suburb of Wayne, N.J. It won the title last season in the six-city Federal Hockey League, which officials equate in status to the Single-A level in minor league baseball.

The Federal Hockey League supplies players to the ECHL, which would be equivalent to a Double-A league.

Williamsport is better known for its Little League baseball roots. The very first Little League organized in 1939 played on a dusty diamond once located just beyond the Bowman Field outfield wall in a blue-collar residential neighborhood.

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $3.75/week.

Subscribe Today