Regular readers of Midwest Guest know that we're huge hockey fans and that we dearly miss the Plymouth Whalers. This season has been particularly quiet on the hockey scene for us as the Plymouth Whalers moved north to Flint, Michigan after the end of last season, which means we no longer have season tickets for games and have been looking for some viable alternatives to allow us to get our hockey fix.
We enjoy hockey enough that a well-played game between fairly evenly matched high school hockey teams can be enjoyable, but we've found that there can be a wide disparity between the skill levels from various metro Detroit high school teams and we often end up watching a blow out by one of the teams or, as we did quite recently, see a game stopped after the second period due to a mercy rule that allowed games to be called after one of the teams quickly reaches a 10-point lead.
We won't even talk about the fact that high school games have only three 17-minute periods, as opposed to pro teams that play three 20-minute periods and spectators can't get a beer during the games.
Enter the Toledo Walleye, a minor pro league of the East Coast Hockey League named after a popular game fish in the Toledo area.
When we saw the Whalers, it was an hour's drive both to and from the arena in usually heavy Detroit-area traffic, so we figured making a Walleye trip an overnight would be a relatively easy commute. Toledo is a little over an hour from here, and an overnight allowed us to pick our time of day when to make the drive.
The Walleye draw a number of players that previously played in the OHL, so there was also a good chance we'd see some players we'd watched play hockey in the past. Some of them are still young enough that there is a chance you could still see them play in the NHL at some point in the future as well.
The Walleye currently sit in first place in the North Division of the Eastern Conference of the ECHL, just a point ahead of the Wheeling (WV) Nailers, and holding a fairly comfortable lead over the next team down in the division, the Kalamazoo (MI) Wings
Toledo's team, founded in 1991 as the Toledo Storm, previously played in an aging arena across the Maumee River from Downtown Toledo until suspending operations for two years in 2007 while the team's new owners built a brand new arena right in downtown Toledo.
The team resumed playing home games as the Walleye in the new Huntington Center when it opened in 2009.
The hockey team's current ownership group is a subsidiary of the Toledo's Triple-A baseball team the Mud Hens, and the arena is just a short walk from the downtown ball park.
The Walleye also have strong Michigan ties as the team has affiliations with the NHL's Detroit Red Wings and the Grand Rapids (MI) Griffins of the American Hockey League.
The Storm enjoyed success over its 16-year history as a T-Town hockey team, and the team continued its winning ways as the Walleye.
Their first home game drew a sell-out crowd of 8,000, the largest crowd to watch a pro-hockey event in Toledo up until that time. Even though the team lost that game to Florida's Everblades, it won the next two match-ups with the Everblades that weekend, and the team made three appearances in the playoffs during its six year history as the Walleye.
The Walleye lost in the Conference Finals during the 2015 playoffs, which I'm assuming is the reason for this year's Walleye tagline-"Our Fish, Our Fight...We've got Unfinished Business to Settle."
We checked into the Park Inn, a downtown hotel across the street from the arena on one side, a place we'd stayed in the past as it is also across the street from the Mud Hens' ball park on the other side.
The arena has about double the capacity that our former Whalers arena and the game started off with the singing of the Canadian and American National Anthems as did all of the Whaler games we watched over the years.
We felt pretty much at home as rink staff inflated the Walleye tunnel for players entering the rink to pass through as the announcers read the starting lineup and the rest of the team as we used to watch the Whalers enter the rink at the beginning of each home game though their own inflatable whale tunnel (we still miss Shooter, though). The Walleye cast of mascots includes Spike the fish and a large blue cat named Catrick who skated around the ice between periods and during warm ups.
The big bonus for me? The Walleye arena sells Yuengling beer, a brand I can't buy in Michigan and stop regularly in a Toledo grocery store to pick up some to take home with me.
The Walleye roster also included players we'd previously watched in the "O" and we saw former Plymouth Whaler A.J. Jenks and former Saginaw (MI) Spirit goalie Jake Paterson play that evening.
The ECHL formed during the 1988-1989 season and more than two dozen teams play a 72-game schedule each season, averaging 4,000-plus fans in attendance at each game.
During the 2014-2015 season, the league had 28 former players that played their first NHL game, making a total of 569 former ECHL players who played in the NHL at one point over the life of the league.
And how is this for a fun fact?
Erin Whitten became the first U.S. born woman to participate in an ECHL game, playing goalie for the Toledo Storm on October 30, 1993 and becoming the first female goal tender to earn a victory in a professional hockey game. She also became the first woman to play pro hockey in a non-goalie position when she played with the Toledo Storm on March 7, 1996 as a forward for 18 seconds against Madison Monsters.
Connect with the Walleye on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube or by signing up for the team's email newsletter, and get your Walleye wear at the Swamp Shop in downtown Toledo or online.
Check out (and even possibly purchase) a photo of Erin Whitten in her Toledo Storm jersey.
Also be sure to check out our experiences with the Toledo Mud Hens: Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Yes there Really is a Tony Packos and a story about Moses Fleetwood Walker, a pioneering African American baseball player who became the first African American to play at the Major League level in Toledo during 1884.
©Dominique King 2015 All rights reserved
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