Looks like the AHL may be moving in to OKC. Better hurry, I'll bet they need the matrices done quickly for teams sharing arenas with NBA teams. Hurts the CHL fo sho, weren't they the league leaders in attendance by quite a bit? I've heard that, anyway.

End of the road for Blazers

No link for the Scorps, it just says "ceasing operations" on their website but the story requests a user ID. Strange.

EDIT: Rocky Mountain is also ceasing operations for this season. Sheez.

More info from Dallas Morning News. Looks like the city would be hockey dark for a year, then the AHL would move in next year. Lots of free agents available.

Blazers dead

I hope they retain the name "Blazers", they've been around forever.

I read rumors that Hicks is trying to buy the Iowa Chops franchise for $3.7M or something like that to solve his Cedar Park problem. But an Iowa judge has said the team has to stay there, and that's obviously not happening since Anaheim dumped the affiliation.

If an AHL franchise is worth that much, is that what the Edmonton folks will expect from Oke City?

It's conceivable that the Iowa franchise could get locked up in legal limbo and Edmonton moves to Oke City, in which case Hicks is still looking to buy someone out.

This is great news for the Texas Stars. It give's us another team to play close by. Only a matter of time before Tulsa and their big arena move to the AHL too.

Hockey teams are so transient that what OKC had was very rare - the same team for 17 years. At any level of minor league hockey, there are only three teams that have been around longer: the ECHL’s Johnstown Chiefs, the IHL’s Fort Wayne Komets and the AHL’s Hershey Bears.

(Thanks to Berry Tramel for that last tidbit. Very interesting.)