Lucas Punkari
For the first time in three years, a new team will be joining the Superior International Junior Hockey League for the 2013/14 season.
The new franchise, which will be called the Eagles and be based out of Ear Falls, officially was announced last Thursday by the league, with Ear Falls Mayor Kevin Kahoot serving as the team’s general manager and head coach.
“It’ll be a lot shorter commute for me that it was when I was coaching in Thunder Bay for the North Stars last season,” Kahoot quipped.
“It’s pretty exciting for the people in Ear Falls and Red Lake as this has always been a good hockey area and both communities have done well in hockey over the years,” he added.
“There was a group a few years ago that kind of pursued having a team here, but that didn’t really go anywhere,” Kahoot noted.
“And we felt that the time was now to take that next step and join the junior ranks.”
The process to bring a team to Ear Falls, which has a population of 1,200 and is about 70 km southeast of Red Lake, began in earnest back in March during the opening round of the SIJHL playoffs.
“I had a number of conversations with my contacts that I have in Thunder Bay who I regularly chat with, along with [SIJHL commissioner] Ron Whitehead and the coach of the Minnesota Iron Rangers [Chris Walby] in Hoyt Lakes,” Kahoot recalled.
“After that, we started slowly up here with information meetings in both Red Lake and Ear Falls to gauge the amount of support that we had from both the public and on the commercial side of things,” he explained.
“As things started to get rolling, we had more and more people starting to stand up and say, ‘Hey, what can I do,’ and we already have a good group of 40-55 volunteers that are ready to pitch in and do whatever it takes to do whatever it takes to get this off of the ground.”
That support is something Kahoot has been very pleased to see right away for the Eagles, especially in a community as small as Ear Falls.
“You are always going to have the nay-sayers who say you can’t do something like this here in Ear Falls,” he conceded.
“But Hoyt Lakes is a small community and they have a team there that is going strong,” he stressed.
“But there are more and more people who are starting to say, ‘Why can’t we have a team here,’ and they are looking forward to having something to up this way during the winter,” Kahoot added.
The Eagles, who have yet to determine their full name, will be led by Kahoot for the first season. But that could change as time goes on.
“Once things get establish here, I would like to start sharing some of the duties and my preference would to eventually have someone co-coach or share general manager duties,” noted Kahoot, who has been involved with the Thunder Bay North Stars and the Des Moines Buccaneers of the USHL in the past.
“Someone has to take the bulls by the horns a little bit at the start, though, and I’m already familiar with the contacts and the players in the league, along with the scouting staff that we already have in place here,” he reasoned.
Now that the team officially has been announced, the next step for the Eagles will be to start their season-ticket drive and to begin building the roster as they prepare for their inaugural season.
“We had originally planned to start the season-ticket drive in June, but it might actually start later this month as we already have a lot of people who are asking about tickets already,” Kahoot noted.
“We’re also already underway in getting players for the team as we have been working with scouts in the United States and in Thunder Bay, along with doing a little bit of work out west,” he added.
While the SIJHL will be gaining a team for the 2013/14 season, they also will be losing the league’s top club from the past three years.
In a move that had been rumoured for most of the season, it was officially announced Friday afternoon that the Minnesota Wilderness would be moving to the NAHL come next year.
The Cloquet-based squad, which originally was based out of Spooner, Wis. until this past season, had won the last three Bill Salonen Cup titles and currently is competing at the Royal Bank Cup national Junior ‘A’ championship in Summerside, P.E.I.
The SIJHL has yet to make an official announcement on whether another team will take over the Wilderness’ spot in the league come this fall.
