Vincent Harris
This morning, the ECHL, in conjunction with the Professional Hockey Players Association, announced that 13 of their hockey teams in Allen, Florida, Greenville, Indy, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Orlando, Rapid City, South Carolina, Tulsa, Utah, Wheeling and Wichita will begin a 72-game season on December 11th.
That means that fans of the Greenville Swamp Rabbits will see their favorite players hit the ice at Bon Secours Wellness Arena starting in December. And no one’s more excited about that than the Swamp Rabbits’ new coach, Andrew Lord.
“I think this is just a huge positive for our city, for our state, for the ECHL overall,” Lord says. “I couldn’t be more excited to get this opportunity to finally have a set thing and we’re ready to go.”
The plan is for the ECHL to have a split-season, with the remaining teams beginning their play on January 21st. The regular season is scheduled to conclude in early June of 2021.
Lord says that he and the team knew to expect the unexpected once the covid-19 pandemic began to spread.
“We’ve just been working through every possible scenario as we’ve gone through the off-season since my hiring 2 ½ or 3 months ago,’ he says. “We feel very prepared, we feel ready to pounce on things, and I think we’re going to have a very good season.”
