Welcome to TheEHL.blogspot.com!
I'm Tom T. and I was fortunate enough to have been able to see the old Eastern Hockey League Jersey Devils from the 1969-70 season until the league ended in 1973. I loved the old league, and in July 2008, I got the inspired idea to create a website for the EHL. There was definitely a need. When I saw that the name http://TheEHL.com was actually available (how many stupid webnames are unavailable?), I recognized that I was destined to do this.
One might certainly ask why we need a
blog for a league that has been defunct for 36 years, especial
ly when we already have a website. Two good reasons:
1) As I research old newspapers, I extract a lot of data that in its raw form is probably not terribly readable. It's cool to have the game scores and box scores, but that data needs a voice to bring it to life. The blog should allow me to do that.
2) There's a lot more EHL current events than you might think. The blog format allows me to dash off a quick update, that you can see in your particular RSS feed (I use Google homepage myself - you can use the "Subscribe to... Posts" button on the right to add this), without me having to e-mail the TheEHL.com Mailing List to death. This became obvious when John Brophy was inducted into the ECHL Hall of Fame last month. By the time I had a chance to get an e-mail out with all of the info in it, it was only a couple of days ahead of time, which probably precluded anyone jumping in a car to go see John get inducted. With the blog, I could make a quick note when I see it and a bunch of updates as I get them - rather than 5 or 6 e-mails.
The blog is part of what I envision as a 3-pronged EHL website...Site, Blog, Message Boards. The latter is so that we can communicate with each other and build an EHL community sharing our memories. I actually had EHL boards for awhile, but I wasn't happy with the quality, and they were frankly taking up all of the time I wanted to use getting http://TheEHL.com up and running. When they crashed, I took them down. I'll be looking for better boards, but it may be a while as I have a few things I'd like to accomplish - like get some of the great stuff people have sent me up on the site first.
Well, that's quite enough for my first post.
Thanks to all of you for helping keep hockey history alive 36 years later.
Don't forget to add this to your Google homepage. (There's probably other ways to get notified of updates, but I'm new to this.)
- Tom T.
Keeping on a New York Rovers/Long Island Ducks/Commack Arena theme today, not to mention the "inventing the slapshot" theme, here is a new blog by Joe Pelletier on his GreatestHockeyLegends.com blog about Eastern Hockey League great Gene Achtymichuk. Apparently in his NHL trials, Achtymichuk replaced injured Jean Beliveau in Montreal (on a line with slapshot inventor "Boom Boom" Geoffrion), and played on a line with Gordie Howe and Alex Delvecchio in Detroit. Achtymichuk had at least 30 goals and 80 assists in each of his first four years with the Knoxville Knights and Long Island Ducks.
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