The Goal Of 32

With the NHL seemingly poised to expand back into Atlanta, Georgia sometime in the next decade, it would make sense if other leagues start preparing for that eventual expansion. After all, both the AHL and ECHL have all their teams affiliated with NHL teams, so adding more teams would make sense for future expansion. In the ECHL's case, though, they're still one team short after the New Mexico expansion was announced, but they erased that problem today with their latest announcement. The best part of this announcement is that it appears the ECHL will benefit greatly from this decision while a city who once had professional hockey will see it return once again. The ECHL is expanding again, folks!

Announced by the league today, the new team will take up residence in Augusta, Georgia where the ECHL once called home. The Augusta Lynx were once the Raleigh IceCaps, but that team was forced to move in 1998 after the Carolina Hurricanes finished their arena build in Raleigh with the intention of moving there in 1999. The Lynx, named as a play-on-words for "links" as the team looked to honour Augusta National Golf Course, made the playoffs in six of their ten seasons in Augusta, but only won two playoff rounds in their history. They twice hit 82 points in a season with 2006-07 being the high point with 39 wins, and the 1999-00 season saw the team fall in the ECHL semifinals to the Greenville Grrrowl as their best result of any season. Notable players include goaltenders Tom Draper, Joaquin Gage, and Zac Bierk, Mike Legg of lacrosse-goal fame, and former Avalanche forward Patrick Bordeleau.

The Lynx folded 18 games into the 2008-09 season on December 2, becoming the first team in the ECHL's 21-year history to relinquish its membership midseason. Owners claimed that financial troubles and a failure to find new investors were the reason for shuttering the franchise. Those financial troubles seemed to be valid as the team ranked no higher than 20th out of 23 teams in attendance in any of their final three seasons at Jim Brown Arena. Not good, right?

Aside from a short, three-year run by the SPHL's Augusta Riverhawks, the majority of Augusta's professional hockey history lies with the ECHL. In announcing that a team will return to Augusta in 2027 for the 2027-28 season, it seems pretty clear that Augusta will need to support its team as well as needing owners who have deeper pockets. With all of the Atlanta Gladiators, Savannah Ghost Pirates, and South Carolina Stingrays less than three hours from Savannah, the new Augusta team will need to have their own dedicated fanbase in and around the city if they hope to have a longer timeline than the Lynx.

The city has more than 610,000 people in the metro Augusta area, so supporting an ECHL franchise with 6000+ fans per night shouldn't be too hard to sell. The largest employers are Augusta University, a nuclear energy facility called the Savannah River Site, and the US Army. There is a growing cybersecurity industry in Augusta, and the city has both major newspaper and television outlets that likely will cover the team in-depth. The building blocks are present in Augusta.

As of July 22, 2024, the effort to build a new, 10,500-seat arena in downtown Augusta is underway. "The New Augusta Arena" replaces the old James Brown Arena on the same site, and is set to open in 2027. Regarding the old arena, a lot of the former building's features were recycled. As per WRDW's Hallie Turner, "[t]he seats, scoreboards and other fixtures were removed ahead of the demolition and either sold or given away" while concrete was used to fill the hole left by the arena and the steel inside the building was recycled, helping to keep this new arena project on budget as it moves forward.

I mentioned the ownership would need to have deeper pockets simply due to the competition in the area for fans, and the ECHL announced that this new Augusta franchise will be owned by former NFL and college quarterback Tim Tebow and David Hodges, CEO of Hodges Management Group, LLC. While both men have some wealth individually, it appears that they'll combine their efforts once again just as they did on a number of other ventures including the ECHL's Tahoe Knight Monsters which averaged 3427 fans last season.

Hodges Management Group owns real estate investment firms in Georgia and has minority stakes in the EHCL's Jacksonville Icemen and Savannah Ghost Pirates. Hodges Management Group recently got out of the car sales business after selling two dealerships - one for a record price. In short, Tebow and Hodges have business history in workign together and have enough holdings to spread the risk of failure over those other businesses. The profit margins look thin, but the ECHL seems to have faith in Tebow and Hodges when it comes to owning multiple teams just as they do with the Zawyer Group.

There's no reason why hockey in Augusta can't work, but it appears there will need to be a lot of groundwork done in building a dedicated fanbase for the new franchise. With the Augusta team forecasted to take the ice in 2027-28, it gives the Tebow-Hodges ownership some time to start developing the market for another professional hockey team, and the usual tasks of "Name the Team" contests, jersey and logo unveilings, and community appearances by players, staff, and a mascot will follow in the next two years before the team hits the ice. There's enough of a runway here to allow this new Augusta team to fly, so we'll see how this goes.

Augusta, Georgia is best known for The Masters, but today's news has the ECHL's trying once more to master the Augusta market.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!