While most people don’t like to think of this much, the truth is that sports is a business. In fact, it is quite a big business. Each year the four major sports – hockey, baseball, basketball, and football – plus golf, soccer, NASCAR, and Mixed Martial Arts draw in billions of dollars in revenue. Collectively, sports make up one of the most lucrative of all businesses in the world, especially when one considers college athletics as well.

Because this is a giant commercial operation, the various professional leagues often entrust the management of the organization to people who have experience in the business world. Men and women who may not have excelled on the court, field, or rink, but who have shown that their ability to rule the boardroom is more valued than any other commodity.

Many who have been thrust into this role have taken their leagues to incredible heights, not just in terms of popularity either. They have helped to lead their league to an economic boon that draws in numbers that are mind boggling quite frankly. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, former MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, and former NBA Commissioner David Stern have helped to take their leagues from a successful operation to a global phenomenon that draws in millions of fans a year and earns their respective leagues billions of dollars.

These men have shown an incredible knack to turn silver into gold. To take an operation that fans loved and promote it in such a way that those same fans cannot live without the sport, all while making sure that the various owners of the teams in the league are satisfied with their opportunity to succeed on and off the field.

For nearly 15-years now, the owners in the ECHL have entrusted the success of their league to a man who has done all of those things and more. A man who has taken his passion for the sport he loves and combined it with his business knowledge and expertise to turn the league into one of the premier minor leagues in all of sports. That man is ECHL Commissioner Brian McKenna.

A Foundation Laid for Love of the Game

Brian McKenna is a native of Prince Edward Island, Canada, making it only natural that he would find himself headed to the rink frequently to lace up his skates and play hockey with his friends as a youth. He played the sport throughout his developing years until he reached a point where he realized that “My playing days were over.”

After graduating high school, Brian headed to the University of New Brunswick where he would earn a degree in business administration. While at the university, he also decided to get involved in coaching, and helped in the local youth programs while he was a student at the school.

After graduating the future commissioner took a job in business that was unrelated to hockey, however, he truly wanted to stay in the game. To attain that goal, Brian worked as a volunteer or coach for the greater part of the next 10-years. It was a great way to stay in the game that he loved, while also giving him a connection to his new community.

The Opening Face-Off to a New Career

The community that Brian McKenna and his wife Marlene lived in was Ottawa, which wound up being a major blessing in disguise. In 1992, the National Hockey League (NHL) established an expansion team in Canada’s capital, and this was just the opportunity that Brian was looking for.

“I happened to be living in Ottawa when the Senators returned to the NHL in 1992 and I got on with the team and have been involved with the business, making a living at it for the past 25-years.”

Brian took a job with the team for four seasons, but became active with the team even before the puck dropped for the first time. From 1990-92, he served as the team’s Director of Sales, and in 1992 he was promoted to the team’s Director of Hockey Operations, which included serving as the Governor of the Senators’ American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate.

In 1995, Brian moved on to become the Executive Vice-President and General Manager of the Carolina Monarchs of the AHL. The Florida Panthers affiliate was only in operation for two seasons, but the team is still remembered for setting the single game record for indoor attendance in 1997 at nearly 21,000.

In 1999, he would be moving to another startup club, this time to the Trenton Titans in the ECHL. The city had been awarded a franchise in 1996, but it took three years before they would finally turn on the lights in a game. Brian was hired to help finally make that dream a reality.

McKenna served as the club’s President and General Manager, and the Titans were a success from the very start. In their first season in the league, Trenton would reach the conference finals and, in 2001-02, they won 50 out of 72-games and reached the Kelly Cup Finals. The following season they won their division again, and had another 100-plus point season.

Moving Further off the Ice

Brian McKenna had long appreciated minor league hockey. While his personal passion was to be a star defenseman like his idol Bobby Orr, he had grown up watching Montreal Canadians General Manager Sam Pollock and how he had built a nine-time Stanley Cup winner. Pollock had been influential to McKenna in that the GM showed him the importance of minor league hockey.

“He was one of the first folks in the National Hockey League to see the benefit of having a farm system, probably 10 to 15 years before most people got involved in that end of the business.”

This helped him to develop a great appreciation of the minor league game, and in 2002 he would take that to a whole new level. Prior to the ECHL season beginning, Brian took the job as the league’s commissioner. This was a great opportunity for the new commissioner, but not one he ever really envisioned coming.

“It’s not something that I had ever anticipated and I don’t think people really grow up necessarily wanting to work for a league, aspire to be a commissioner or anything along those lines. In most cases I think, as youngsters, we all want to play at a very high level and perhaps play in the National Hockey League and some want to get into coaching. I really enjoyed my time at the team level. Had been involved in both the National League, the American League, and then in the ECHL. This position, when it became available upwards of 15 years ago, I took a look at it, it seemed to be a good match at the time in terms of what the league was looking for. I saw a challenge there for myself and thought I would jump in and try it for a few years, and here I am still here today.”

When Brian McKenna became the league’s commissioner he was undertaking a rather daunting task. While the league had been around since 1988, it had undergone a lot of change in the 14-years prior to Brian becoming commissioner. The league began with five teams but had reached 27-teams by the time he took the job. However, in the first three seasons in his new positions, 11 teams would either cease operations or move to a new location, creating a rather tumultuous time early on.

“There were a lot of challenge to the new job, and there are still many today. We wanted to keep growing the league, growing the fan base, but there was a lot of challenges to overcome early on. It’s fair to say you don’t get into minor league hockey to get rich, and I don’t think everyone understands that at first. It takes time to grow a franchise, to get to that second generation of fans. You have to be around for 20 or 25 years to make that happen, and that is not easy to accomplish.”

Despite the early challenges, Brian had a clear vision of what he was looking to accomplish, and the league began to grow and mature. The new commissioner drew off the history of the league while also making stronger connections to the AHL.

“We have some very good traditional markets that have had hockey for 50 or 60 years. The origins of the ECHL and what has traditionally been the strongest part of the ECHL has been in those non-traditional markets which are now becoming traditional markets. Once you pass that 20 or 25-year time period, now you’re into the second generation of people who are watching your hometown team and I think all of a sudden it starts to become a part of the fabric of the community.”

In addition for looking for those untapped markets in what can be consider non-traditional markets, the Commissioner also sought to make the league about trying new things, especially when it came to player safety. Working with his owners and the player’s union, the ECHL became the first professional hockey league to require that players wear visors. Strick protocols have been implemented to deal with concussions, and stricter enforcement of penalties for hits to the head or for stick infractions have been implemented to ensure that players are as safe as possible. That is not easy to accomplish in a game played on ice where players are going at speeds of 30 mph or more, something the Commissioner acknowledges is a tough challenge.

“We have implemented rules in terms of hits to the head, blows to the head, We increased the emphasis in terms of making sure that there are penalties in place, officiating standards in place that hopefully lessen the chances of that. We don’t want to see blows to the head. We don’t want to see the head being the initial point of contact, and I think that there have been various rule changes that have been implemented over the past number of years to make that happen. From the point of hockey, player safety is and continues to be front and center in terms in of our product and what we can do to enhance that for the future. That is not always easy.

“I think the biggest thing that I have noticed, particularly the last 5 to 7 years, is just the overall speed of the game. All players now, it doesn’t matter the size, they can all skate, they can all move, and the pace of the game up and down the ice is just much quicker than it was a decade ago. That makes it much more challenging for the players and for the officials. You have to make decisions at very high speeds, think very quickly on the ice whether you are on offense or defense. It is more of a challenge to officiate games now, but we work with our officials to ensure that the game is as safe as it can be.”

A Tough Act to Follow

While an impressive legacy in and of itself, it has not just been in the area of player safety and improved officiating that Brian McKenna has made his mark. The league is back at 27 teams, with two more slated to join the league next season and a goal set by the Commissioner of at least 30 teams for the future. During his time as commissioner, the ECHL has undergone some dramatic changes, including adding seven teams from the defunct West Coast Hockey League in his second season at the helm, and adding seven from the defunct Central Hockey League three seasons ago. All seven of those teams are still in operation.

The past few years may have actually been the busiest for Brian. Not only did the former CHL teams join the league but, to accommodate the NHL teams, three ECHL teams relocated to other markets so that AHL teams could take the west coast markets to be closer to their NHL club. There has been a lot going on, but the Commissioner is not patting himself on the back choosing, instead, to give credit to the clubs for all that has been accomplished.

“It has been a very hectic off-season over the last few years in terms of trying to assimilate all those teams, getting them off the ground before the season began, redoing the schedule as well. That was very challenging, but I give credit to all of those teams in terms of how hard they worked in order to make that happen.”

The Health of the League Is Clear

The success of the ECHL is not only seen in the fact that one season from now they will have more clubs than ever before. The health of the league is also seen in that the average attendance per game, which has topped 4,000 for 24 of the last 26 seasons, and there has been at least 4,000 averaged per game in all but one of his seasons as commissioner, including the last 12.

Helping to improve the success of the league is something that Brian is quite proud of. He was hired by the owners to make their business a success, not only their individual franchises, but also the league as a whole. To accomplish this, the Commissioner has been dogged to work with owners to make connections with their fan base, especially with the youth in their area.

“One of the things that we have been most proud of over the years are markets like Southwest Florida, places like Charleston, NC, who have had hockey for approximately two decades and because of the team there and ownership groups building additional recreational rinks in the community, there are now hundreds of kids on an annual basis who are now playing the game where 20, 25 years ago they were not exposed to it and had not opportunity to play the game. We, collectively, have worked hard to introduce the game to non-traditional hockey fans, but also introducing young people to the game and giving them the opportunity to not only become players, but also become fans, and hopefully look to become coaches and administrators within the sport in their particular market as well.”

The increased fan base has been of special enjoyment for the Commissioner, but where Brian’s greatest joy comes is in how he has helped to continue the ideas that Sam Pollock helped create – to have a league that develops personnel so that they can reach the highest level of the sport.

“The thing I am most proud of is seeing people get an opportunity to improve their career and move up through the system. When I say that, it’s not just players. We have over 600 players that started here and have now moved up. However, we also have coaches. There are now 30 coaches, either head or assistant coaches, in the NHL that started in our league. Fully a third of the NHL’s on-ice officials – referees, linesman – all got their start in the professional level in our league, and then scores of front office people, whether that’s broadcasters, marketing, sales people, in a couple of cases, team presidents that started in our league and moved their way up the system. To see young people come into the business, hone their skills, get an opportunity to be exposed to the sport, grow in the sport, and then move up is something that I certainly take a lot of pride in.”

There are many commissioners in sports leagues who are helping to make their organization an elite league. However, few are doing so in the sport that they have loved since they were a little kid. This is where the ECHL commissioner is one of the few exceptions.

Brian has helped to turn one of hockey’s most important minor league organizations into a prosperous organization that is developing talent in all facets of the game. He has used his business expertise to help provide a vision, and entrusted the success of that vision to the men and women that make the ECHL one of the most enjoyable and affordable sports leagues for fans to watch. Maybe Brian McKenna wasn’t a fantastic, star hockey player, however, he has proven to be an even bigger star off the ice.

By Robert Pannier