Hockey may be coming back to Portland
Just a week after it left.
Those pricey arena renovations up in Portland, Maine might not go to waste after all.
Last week, news broke that the Portland Pirates of the American Hockey League would be sold to a group of investors from Springfield, with plans to move the team to the western Massachusetts city.
The announcement came just two years after the completion of a $34 million, taxpayer-funded renovation of the Pirates’ home arena. The sale-and-move meant the team would break a five-year lease signed in 2014.
But now a new team might skate at the Cross Insurance Arena, according to Whitneigh Kinne, a spokeswoman for the Pirates. The current general manager of the Pirates and a former owner who helped found the AHL team are working to bring an ECHL team to the city.
The ECHL is a rung below the AHL in the NHL’s minor league system, but some of its teams are independent.
It is not yet clear whether the incoming Portland team would be an existing ECHL club, bought and moved, or if it would be a new expansion team.
The Pirates are the AHL affiliate of the NHL’s Florida Panthers, who do not have an ECHL affiliate.
The New England hockey musical chairs began in April when the Springfield Falcons were bought by their NHL affiliate, the Arizona Coyotes, who announced they would move the team to Arizona. Within weeks, the Pirates were Springfield-bound and Portland’s arena was left without its anchor tenant.
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