AIHL Midwest

[ISFN]

Any consideration regarding expansion of a new division?

[GROWL]

Naturally we'd love to, but proper leadership will need to surface. Dave Garland come back. He has risen to the top!!!

[MBurke]

Naturally we'd love to, but proper leadership will need to surface. Dave Garland come back. He has risen to the top!!!

A fantastic show by the way: http://www.therisetothetop.com/

[cdolan]

Garland was ousted for a reason. I don't know how many people know the entire story, but let's just drop the thought of him running any league here. And no I'm not gonna say why he was removed. I don't even know if I'm supposed to know. Anyways, I hear he's doing pretty good with his current situation.

[Alvare71]

Garland was ousted for a reason. I don't know how many people know the entire story, but let's just drop the thought of him running any league here. And no I'm not gonna say why he was removed. I don't even know if I'm supposed to know. Anyways, I hear he's doing pretty good with his current situation.

Well I dont think its fair to say something like that when the guy is not in the post. I think there are guys who think he is a great leader, I dont know him at all.

But for someone to say there was a reason, unless it was criminal then I understand.

But to tell someone to drop the thought, then come out and say what you know.........its only fair to the guy.

[GROWL]

Garland was ousted for a reason. I don't know how many people know the entire story, but let's just drop the thought of him running any league here. And no I'm not gonna say why he was removed. I don't even know if I'm supposed to know. Anyways, I hear he's doing pretty good with his current situation.

I know exactly what went down as well and I will say again that it's an absolute shame that he was pressured out of the sport. To clear things up on a public front Dave did absolutely nothing wrong and the argument in my opinion was purely greedy. When you have someone drawing in tens of thousands of free dollars, and then you argue over a few dollars this way or that way, its ridiculous. 100% of Zero is Zero and that is what they have/had without him. I can only imagine where we would be if Dave was still around.

[cdolan]

We'd have a couple rinks filing chapter 11.

[ianmackie]

I know exactly what went down as well and I will say again that it's an absolute shame that he was pressured out of the sport. To clear things up on a public front Dave did absolutely nothing wrong and the argument in my opinion was purely greedy. When you have someone drawing in tens of thousands of free dollars, and then you argue over a few dollars this way or that way, its ridiculous. 100% of Zero is Zero and that is what they have/had without him. I can only imagine where we would be if Dave was still around.

The rinks owned the teams, yet lost money.

[Mlrhnorthfan]

I dont think its possible for a team to make money right now.

[ianmackie]

That is probably true too.

[minutemen]

No rink will make money right away if they own the team. It takes time to build the program,to get fans, sponsors and advertisers interested. Dave did a great job and had a great plan. I think if teams/rinks would have stuck with it, they would have begun to make some money. It brings more people and new players to the rink. I know when I owned my rink in NJ, we were very close with other owners and we worked with one another. We would hold off season tournaments, we would do our best to send a team to each one. The Growl (Anthony Flynn) Fireants (Jim Miller and Matt Zuba) are just a few teams that we worked with on the off season. Two great organizations, one not around anymore, that were always willing to take a drive on a Saturday or Sunday in the summer to play in a tournament.

[TylerSollberger]

I find it funny that people who weren't close to the situation have such a strong opinion. Nobody said the rinks were trying to make money, but they didn't want to lose money. There happened to be a lot of empty promises and actually a rink stopped having games because of fees not paid to them. Dave had some great ideas, but also ran into some conflicts of interest by playing for a team while running the league.

[GROWL]

In anything in life there is conflict, especially when their is competition involved. I'm not here to represent Dave Garland, although having nothing but positive interaction with him in my dealings leads me to my original statement and willingness to stand up for him a bit. The facts are simple. Dave was the keystone to hockey in that area. Once his involvement ended, participation in a nationally organized league did not last very long. That was my point. Maybe I'm wrong, but knowing first hand the lengths he went to make that division work, I would find it very hard to believe. It's one thing to talk, it's another to take action and Dave was a worker and got things done. It was my experience that the league was threatened by his forward thinking and was probably a big factor in his departure.

Again that said, he is one person and it would be nice for someone to rise up again in that region and get St Louis back on the map in one of these leagues.

[TylerSollberger]

Once again, I find it funny that you are located across the country, but call Dave Garland a "keystone" to hockey in St. Louis. That's actually pretty comical. I guess the "forward thinking" that you are referring to was jumping from PIHA and creating a new league. Which is fine, but it was gone about in the wrong way in our region.

[GROWL]

I don't live in Northern California and yet I know that CJ Gamble and Mario Sousa are keystones to hockey in that region. I can pretty much do that across the country to if you like. Having been involved in the management of these leagues for most of the last decade, I'd say it gives me a pretty good background on most of the ladscape of this sector of the sport.

Im trying not to bring up old battles, but the simple fact is that back in the old piha days, Dave was a very active and successful part of our leadership group amongst the team owners across the nation. He was also a very big critic of the league, as many of us were in our last season. When the mass exitus accorded, Dave simply did not have the support of the rink controled teams, who had loyalties to the league. Then sure enough all sorts of accussations began. The bottom line is that the issues were fixable, but at least it's my belief that the rift between the owners and the league played an enormous role in his departure out there