Jaromir Blagr: The Hockey Blog

If the AHL indeed moves clubs West, would the Aces be in the mix?

There's been some chatter on the Internet in the last couple days about possible expansion West by the AHL and how it involve the NHL and ECHL and Central Hockey League, so all of that, if it ever came to fruition, would matter to the ECHL champion Alaska Aces.

The Yahoo blog Puck Daddy today mused on the possibility and some dude named Travis Hughes obviously put a lot of time and effort into a more thorough examination of the possibilities. Hughes broke it down so deeply he went as far as matching some NHL teams' possible AHL futures with current ECHL teams that would bump up to the AHL -- for the Aces, under Hughes' breakdown, hello Edmonton Oilers organ-I-zation.

Some caveats -- both reports are sprinkled with words and phrases like "rumoured'' (Canadian spelling!), "reportedly,'' "could,'' "if,'' "the belief..." and "according to sources.'' In the biz, this is known as covering your ass because you can't get something on the record. Doesn't mean it won't turn out to be true, but it ain't as good as gold. Also, Hughes refers to as "news,'' a Tweet by agent Darryl Wolski -- "Hearing the ECHL and CHL are in talks to merge both leagues." That's not really news, more like just throwing something out there, but it's interesting nonetheless.

In any event, all of this makes for good off-season chatter.

Doyle Woody

Doyle Woody covered hockey and other sports for the Anchorage Daily News for 34 years.

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