BRIAN MCKENNA

Who is this dude ? Just found out ! Commissioner of the East Coast Hockey League !

As the world knows, I am a big fan of this league, hockey, the Las Vegas Wranglers and now their commissioner. Don't do many interviews in my old age and my meeting McKenna today falls more into the (chat with a friend category) rather than the Groucho Marx (You Bet Your Life) interrogation category.

My mission is always to learn and amuse myself and McKenna helped a lot. Communication is a beautiful thing! example....Josh Fisher ace PR man for the Wranglers emails that McKenna is in town and available, I contact Josh, he sets it up and the commissioner appears available, open, straight up and on time.....it never worked that way when I was in "real" broadcasting ! Thanks guys for stepping up !

Soooooo......... how is the ECHL doing ? "Always room for improvement", said Mckenna, a real solid stock answer and the right one. The Las Vegas franchise showing a profit two years and a loss two years in this unenviable task to stay afloat. I was really curious about money (aren't we all) and McKenna told me the salary cap for players is $11,200 a week. Obviously some in this "AA" league are owned by NHL teams who pay their salary. You do the math..... if its a 20 man roster the guys are making $500ish a week! So what, I made $550 a month as a pro baseball umpire in 1968 and that included expenses. The ECHL players are pretty much YOUNG with the future and real money hopefully ahead. The Las Vegas franchise is valued highly by the league from its ownership (Billie Johnson) , its players and brilliant young GM-Coach Glen Gulutzan.

FIGHTS......hate em, so does McKenna who told me there are less fights and penalty minutes per game in his league than in both the AHL and that "other" league! Being "referee" minded I am always on their side and from the begining here in Las Vegas (now 5 years) the officiating has been outstanding, many of the ECHL offials have moved up and by watching here I can say more many more will. The ECHL officiating is ahead of the player development and adding former NHL referee Bryan Lewis to supervise...their system is only getting better. Many linesman are local working the 25 league citys and the ECHL works with them on travel, lodging and per diem.

Gambling is the only issue in Las Vegas and McKenna took issue with betting on ECHL games, however the Orleans Casino had numbers up for playoff games in April. What's the deal here ?
Maybe McKenna and the Orleans are not on the same page.....seems impossible to put a line on these games and even more impossible to win wagers....whoa....but isn't that the big picture for the Las Vegas gaming industry. Actually there are morons out there who think they cam win NFL parlays....betting the NFL, playing Keno and having children....the three dumbest things people do in life. Actually my only beef with the entire Las Vegas hockey picture is the awful rap music played at every stoppage of play, McKenna told me that's a team issue (an awful one at that).

McKenna, a Prince Edward Island native and New Brunswick University business graduate is all Canadian and he should be, running the league office out of Trenton, New Jersey where he was a team official prior to becoming commissioner in 2001. It is the job of all commissioners in all leagues to meet locally with each team, owner and managment at least once a year and Mckenna told me it is enjoyable being able to get out of the office, ....with 25 teams from Anchorage to Key West that could nicely take care of half a year right there. The ECHL web site is looking at expansion and hopefully a team in Reno could be a great rivalry for Las Vegas 10 times a year! Servicing franchises, trying to keep 25 families reasonably happy and monitoring the big picture, there lies the job of the commissioner, appears here he is doing a hell of a job(impressed me) ! The ECHL is currently split east- west with 16 east teams and 9 west.....the usual or unusual sports nomenclature putting Anchorage, Las Vegas and Phoenix in an "east" league is really semantics not geography. Past seasons have provided one or two east-west scheduling matchups (last year Las Vegas played Texas, previously Trenton) not now, must be cost effective so here, we play 70 games with 8 opponents, (I could see Idaho every night). This scenario is different in the east where the 15 teams comingle, a schedule obviously tweaked with changing franchises.

Pretty much the strength of anything starts at the top and McKenna amplifies the reasons why I like the ECHL, the Las Vegas franchise and the Orleans Arena, its led by people with talent who care and work at being successful. Some of this I dreamed up, some of this McKenna dreamed up but everything you have read here is in fact TRUE.

Oh year, they had a game at 9:30 am this morning matching last seasons two top teams Idaho and Las Vegas for 3783 school kids! Great game with the home team prevailing 4-3 for their tenth straight win in a game that had it all, plus the usual mechanics I like......everybody chasing the puck all the time.

Geat interview(or conversation), great sport too.... 100 A+