Adding a new team to the American Hockey League ledger for the 2007-08 season will be the Cleveland based Lake Erie Monsters. They will be playing in the Quicken Loans Arena starting next season and become the Colorado Avalanche's minor league development. I don't want to run negative, but I wonder why hockey insists on planting the flag of a franchise in an area where it has failed so many times before. Cleveland Barons on 3 different occasions and the IHL had the Lumberjacks as a good development team before it had to fold too. Perhaps marketing the team with the great lakes name is trying to branch out around the neighboring communities.
The one good thing it has got going for them is that the owner of the franchise is also controlling the area's most popular basketball team in the Cleveland Cavaliers. They also have on board as hockey community relations, Jock Callendar, who is very well known in the Lumberjack legacy.
Another thing to think about is the balance that it sets with the AHL and the NHL with having franchises share developmental teams. The Avalanche finally have a system that they can concentrate on developing players like Riku Hahl.
[Via: Lake Erie Monsters Official Site]
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