It should be a fun afternoon today at the Allen Event Center as the place will be hopping with school kids making lots of noise as the Allen Americans take on the Arizona Sundogs in the traditional Martin Luther King Day game called "Kid's Day Out." There might be plenty of noise on the ice as well as Allen and Arizona will be playing for the third straight game and that always is the formula for physical play. Puck drop is 1:05 pm.
- This will be the fourth time in five years Arizona has been the opponent for MLK day. Allen won in 2010 (4-2) and 2011 (4-3). Arizona won the game last year (3-2) when they scored the winning goal with 2:22 left in the game.
- The only time Allen didn't play Arizona on MLK day (2012) they played Tulsa and lost 5-4.
- With a 1:05 start time players routines are changed which is a big thing for many of them. So who might play well in this day game? Two players to keep an eye on today are Tyler Ludwig who has a goal and three assists in the last two MLK games and Brian McMillin who had two goals and was the #1 star in the 2012 game.
On this MLK day many of Martin Luther King's famous quotes apply to hockey as well as life:
- “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way”
- “Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.”
- “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of
comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and
controversy.”
- “There is no gain without struggle.”
- “Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”
- “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
- One of the many recruiting points Coach Martinson uses when pursuing players to come to Allen in addition to the ownership, community, facility, apartments on a golf course, weather. etc. is his history of having players called up to the AHL. This year Allen has only had one call up when Alex Lavoie played one game for the Oklahoma City Barons. Still plenty of time for additional call ups as last year most of the call ups were later in the season. Here are the call ups for the CHL thus far this season:
Denver - 11
Quad City - 7
St. Charles - 2
Allen - 1
Arizona - 0
Brampton - 0
Missouri - 0
Rapid City - 0
Tulsa - 0
Wichita - 0
- Was recently looking at some data related to attendance which showed across the entire spectrum of minor league hockey (SPHL, CHL, ECHL, AHL) attendance is down this year 2.81%. Of the 72 teams in these four leagues there are only two averaging below 2000 per game and they are both in the CHL (St. Charles 1956 & Denver 1371). Allen's average attendance (4189) ranks them #39 of the 72 minor league teams.
- Average attendance by league:
AHL: 5004
ECHL: 4487
CHL: 3512
SPHL: 2891
- The top two drawing teams in minor league hockey are the Hershey Bears (AHL) at 9301 and the Ontario Reign (ECHL) at 7820.
- Weekly power rankings should be interesting this week. Was working on my input and a couple of things stood out. Arizona and Wichita, who have languished at the bottom of the CHL standings, are slowly closing the gap with the teams ahead of them. Wichita has the current longest winning streak in the league (4) and Arizona has won five of six games. Missouri (0-2), Denver (0-2), Quad City (0-1), and Tulsa (0-1) were all winless last week. Brampton has four games at home this week starting today against St. Charles with a chance to make a move in the standings.
- DID YOU KNOW: Rapid City leads the CHL standings by two points with the worst special teams in the league. Their power play is ranked #8 and penalty kill is ranked #10.
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