The newest minor league sports team in Jacksonville will be unveiled in October, looking to create their own identity, yet follow the same successful formulas that a couple other city sports teams have endured already this year.
The Jacksonville Icemen will bring hockey back to Jacksonville for the first time since 2008, when the Barracudas called a halt to their existence. The Barracudas weren’t the only hockey team that failed to make a go of it in Jacksonville. Prior to the team’s six-year stint, the Bullets (1992-96) and the Lizard Kings (1995-2000) combined with the Barracudas to showcase hockey in Jacksonville for a stretch of 15 of 17 years. There were games at Skate World, the old Jacksonville Coliseum and the current Veterans Memorial Arena.
All of the three aforementioned teams enjoyed some success during their time in Jacksonville, but eventually ceased operations due to lack of funding and crowd support. The ownership group of the latest hockey franchise predicts that things will be different with the current organization for several reasons.
“Jacksonville is a different city than it was back then,” said Icemen president, Bob Ohrablo. “The growth has been incredible and much of that growth is coming from where people grew up with hockey. Another important factor is that we’re well-funded. We’re very comfortable in that department. The third thing is I’ve brought in an experienced team, both with players on the ice and the front office staff, many of whom have worked with me before. We think we know what we’re doing. This is my 33rd year in hockey so I’ve been through this a lot. If you provide people with family priced, good-fun and a very entertaining product, they’re going to come out and we’re seeing it already.”
Ohrablo is taking a page from the Jumbo Shrimp’s success story this past season. The Shrimp, who set a record in raising their per-game attendance average by nearly 1,000 fans per game, harped on the theme of “affordable family fun”. They lowered ticket prices, took the concessions food to another level and brought in more entertaining promotions than ever before. Of course it helped matters when the Shrimp turned their season around at the half-way point and won their division in the second-half title race to qualify for the playoffs.
The Sharks and Giants also claimed league championships this past season. The Giants made it back-to-back American Basketball Association (ABA) titles in April and several months later in July, the Sharks captured the second championship in franchise history with a win in the final game of the inaugural National Arena Football League. Having the Icemen become Jacksonville’s fourth minor league champion this year won’t be an easy task for the Icemen in their initial year in the Eastern Collegiate Hockey League (ECHL).
The Icemen will be one of 28 teams in the ECHL for the 2017-18 season. A 72-game schedule will feature a Southeast-heavy alignment with nine contests against the Orlando Solar Bears and 14 matchups against the Florida Everblades from Estero, near Fort Myers. Among other opponents who will face the Icemen double-digit times this season are the Atlanta Gladiators (11 games), Greenville Swamp Rabbits (10) and South Carolina (10). By contrast, the Icemen won’t have any games against several distant ECHL teams such as the Alaska Aces and Idaho Steelheads.
Taking on the task of leading the Icemen, who moved from Evansville and then took a one-year hiatus to help the Jacksonville staff get organized, is Jason Christie, a 48-year-old former coach in the ECHL where he accumulated 547 wins over 14 years. He’s had coaching stops with the Tulsa Oilers (his most recent coaching spot), the Peoria Rivermen, Ontario Reign and Utah Grizzlies. Christie will serve as vice president of hockey operations as well as his head coaching duties.
“We’ve got a good core group that we’ll have to build upon,” Christie said. “Jacksonville is a great city and we want to be sure we build a fan base here for every game. The facility we’ll play in is unbelievable, so we’ve had players and agents calling us, inquiring about playing here. Our goal is to build our product and that we’re competitive each and every night.”
Christie said the Icemen ownership group has shown that they are totally committed to Jacksonville and bringing a winning product here for the fans.
“Just to see what Bob and the ownership group have done here is really great,” he said. “They’re committed, it’s exciting,” the Icemen’s coach said. “When you can come to work each day with that environment, it makes it unreal.”
The Icemen who will be a minor league affiliate of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets, will play 24 of their 36 games on the weekend including several Sunday afternoon contests, none of which will coincide with Jacksonville Jaguars games however.
“To have 24 home games on the weekends, that’s when people will want to come out and see hockey,” Ohrablo said. “We already had a 1,500 season fan base in place by Labor Day and we should be around the 3,000 mark by the time the season starts in October. We’d like to see around 5,000- 6,000 fans a game. We think that’s a realistic number.”
“It’s going to be like a 2½-hour party at our games,” he said. “We’ll do a lot of things between periods, let kids come out on the ice and we’ll have things during stoppage of play as well. We’ll have meet and greet sessions between our fans and the players after the game. We want our players known throughout the community. These things have worked with the Shrimp and Sharks and we’re confident our fans will also have the same fun experience at our games.”
Icemen Invade Jacksonville
By Jeff Elliott
