Crunching The Numbers

In league that had its fair share of fly-by-night owners, poor hockey markets, bad management, and inexplicable decisions, the Federal Propects Hockey League will push forward in 2026-27 with seventeen teams. If that number seems high to you, it's because "The Fed", as they're colloquially known, has pushed for some major expansion in recent months and years. Operating in twelve states, the FPHL circuit is hardly one of a "bus league" any longer, and the likelihood of the accounting to operate a team in this version of the FPHL working out for all teams seems very low.

HBIC isn't here to rain on the parades of the fourteen teams that play in places like Minnesota, Kansas, and Louisiana, though, because there are regional games that can make up the majority of those teams' schedules to keep costs lower. Yes, there might be a game or two in a region nor normally visited, but none of those fourteen teams had ever planned on flying their entire roster and staff to California in a season before. With three new teams there, let's look at the distances each team will travel to play hockey this season.

Within California, Fresno to Stockton is a two-hour drive in either direction as the 126-mile distance won't be hard to cover as per Google Maps. Oceanside to Fresno is a more arduous trip as it takes five hours to go from one city to the other on the 308-mile route, and Oceanside to Stockton is 6.5 hours each way for the 427-mile trip. Needless to say, a California road trip for any of the fourteen teams will still involve a lot of travel in-state to reach the three teams.

Assuming that each of the fourteen teams makes a one-week trip to California, they could potentially get three games of hockey against the California teams in without any trouble. With adequate travel and rest time for the road teams, it would eliminate three of the 28 road games each team plays, leaving 25 road games against the remaining thirteen teams in the FPHL circuit on each schedule.

Where the math starts getting tricky, however, is the distance and costs to cover those distances. For simplicity's sake, let's assume that each of the fourteen non-California teams want to fly into Stockton. As it stands, Stockton's airport only has flights to Las Vegas and Phoenix meaning that there would have to be a connector where all of the equipment and gear gets moved. American Airlines flies from Denver to Fresno, but there would need to be a transfer again. Oceanside's airport only has one runway and rarely has commercial flights land there. In short, direct flights aren't available.

Based on where each team is located, it would appear that they're going to have to fly in or out of one of San Francisco or San Diego depending on where their California road trip begins and ends. Unless teams are willing to fork over thousands of dollars in charter flight costs, flying commercial will be the economical way of getting to California unless Topeka or Minnesota opt to do a three-day bus ride to The Golden State. I'm not sure that's something the players want.

And maybe that's the direction the FPHL will go, telling each team to bus it out to California. The distances shown below for each team are the distances to Stockton, to Fresno, and to Oceanside in miles and hours of travel in parentheses, respectively. The most efficient bus routes for the fourteen FPHL eastern teams are as follows:

Distances

Team	Stockton	Fresno	Oceanside
Baton Rouge franchise	2104 (31)	1980 (29)	1765 (25)
Binghamton Black Bears	2792 (41)	2863 (42)	2752 (40)
Blue Ridge Bobcats	2611 (38)	2487 (36)	2408 (34)
Columbus River Dragons	2426 (36)	2301 (34)	2116 (31)
Danbury Hat Tricks	2930 (43)	2958 (43)	2874 (42)
Indiana Sentinels	2258 (35)	2232 (32)	2121 (31)
Mid-South Monarchs	2930 (43)	1928 (28)	1816 (26)
Minnesota Northern Lights	1844 (28)	1964 (30)	1946 (29)
Monroe Moccasins	1963 (29)	1838 (27)	1671 (24)
Motor City Rockers	2593 (38)	2468 (36)	2357 (35)
Port Huron Prowlers	2413 (35)	2557 (37)	2371 (34)
Topeka Scarecrows	1744 (25)	1680 (24)	1587 (23)
Twin City Thunderbirds	2688 (39)	2565 (37)	2487 (36)
Watertown Wolves	2855 (43)	2866 (42)	2482 (41)

Of course, the three California-based teams will spend blocks of time on the road playing everyone else, so having these three teams out in the far-off galaxy of California makes no sense. Based on every flight plan I can find, it would cost teams approximately $25,000 USD to fly to and from these California cities each way based on head counts and load requirements, so it's almost as if the FPHL teams will have to bus it to the west coast if they want to remain on budget.

For a more visual sense of what I'm saying, here's the FPHL map.

How does expanding to California make any sense for the FPHL?

To me, this expansion feels like a last gasp at trying to breathe life into a league that could fold at any moment. I'm not saying that's the case, but having seven teams either move or join the league in 2026-27 with three of those teams 2000 miles away from all the others is downright baffling. We saw the Athens Rock Lobsters and the Pee Dee IceCats abandon the FPHL for the more stable SPHL, and I suspect that we could see more make that choice if teams or the league begins to struggle financially. The only other option is to fold.

My hope is that there are better financial foundations for the FPHL teams where they can shoulder this new California road trip. Perhaps the league sends one of the two divisions - Continental or Empire - to California each season to help manage costs. Whatever the plan may be for 2026-27, it seems clear that this west coast expansion won't be a cash windfall for any team no matter where they're located.

The numbers didn't add up when the FPHL proposed their California expansion, and I still can't make sense of them. Unless the teams are doing cross-country bus trips to and from California, there's a pile of creative accounting happening to sell this west coast dream.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!