After losing the Augusta Lynx earlier this season, the ECHL has seen another team fold. This time, it’s the Fresno Falcons.
(PR) The ECHL announced Monday that the Board of Governors had voted unanimously to terminate the Membership of the Fresno Falcons, effective immediately.
The termination of the Membership comes as a result of the Fresno ownership group notifying the ECHL that they are unable to continue to operate the Membership for financial reasons.
Failure to ice a team for play is grounds for automatic termination under the ECHL Bylaws.
“We are very disappointed for our fans, league partners and the other member teams,” said ECHL Commissioner Brian McKenna. “The ECHL would like to thank the Fresno fans for their support of the Falcons.”
Fresno players will immediately become unrestricted free agents.
Bakersfield is working on an exhibition game for Saturday to replace the game scheduled against Fresno and will announce details as soon as they become available.
Fresno’s games against Ontario on Sunday and Victoria on Monday have been cancelled.
The league said that work has begun on a revised version of the playing schedule which will be released as soon as possible.
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This does not affect the Trenton Devils, as they were not scheduled to play Fresno this season.
Two things of note…I am tentatively scheduled to get called up to the AHL for a game, as I’m heading up to Philadelphia on the 26th to cover the Phantoms game with the purpose of talking to a few of their ECHL alums for a feature on former league players making an impact on AHL rosters across the northeast.
I haven’t covered an AHL game in about four years, so I’m pretty excited that the Phantoms were kind enough to give me this opportunity.
Also, I will not be covering the December 28th Trenton game against Cincinnati, but will return for the December 30th game against Elmira.
I’ll be in Washington, DC on the 28th, watching former New York Rangers forward Mike Gartner get his jersey retired by the Capitals.
I got a lot of positive feedback on the Sheldon Brookbank feature, so you should also stay tuned for the Pierre-Luc Letorneau-Leblond piece, which should debut over the next few days…
Mike Ashmore, mashmore98 AT gmail.com
December 22, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Guess that means we’ll see a great game 28th with a lot of fights.
December 23, 2008 at 2:34 am
Potentially a win, even.