Just before the end of the regular season, IHL president Doug Moss said the league was stable and he didn't know of a team in danger of leaving or folding.
A week later, the Michigan K-Wings called it quits.
Last week, the Long Beach Ice Dogs left the league for the West Coast Hockey League, a smaller regional organization, saying they couldn't make money.
The league now stands at 11 teams, and Utah is the farthest west. So, was Moss out of touch? Did he miscalculate the viability of the IHL's teams?
He says no.
Moss contends that his representation of the league's future as bright is still true, maybe even more so without Long Beach and Michigan.
"It's understandable," Moss said Friday. "This league made some bad decisions. We went into places we shouldn't have. We're still cleaning some of that up."
Moss took the helm of the IHL in 1998 and immediately took the league in a different direction.
His predecessors expanded the league to 19 teams in the mid-1990s and went into several cities with established NHL teams. The IHL tried to compete with the NHL and the larger league didn't take kindly to it.
NHL clubs opted to affiliate with the AHL (where there are now 20 teams) instead, leaving the IHL without that additional financial support. Moss led the charge to regain the IHL's status as a developmental league for the NHL.
Of the 11 teams that will play in the 2000-01 season, Moss said eight have NHL affiliations. Moss contends the league will actually be stronger with just the remaining teams.
Long Beach and Michigan had the lowest attendance (averaging 4,708 and 3,405, respectively) and the worst financial reports. So, he said it was just a matter of time before their respective owners decided enough loss was enough.
"It was never appropriate to go there," he said. "I hate losing Barry Kemp. I hate losing those owners. But we lost two of the lowest attendance, worst performing teams in the league. What did we lose?"
The only thing that surprised Moss was how late in the year Long Beach waited before deciding to leave for the WHL.
"The people there were trying to make it work," he said. "It's sad."
It is saddest for Utah.
"It puts us in a tougher position," said Utah Grizzlies head coach Bob Bourne. "Losing them as a rival hurts us as far as travel more than anything." Utah played Long Beach 12 times a year and had developed a rivalry that brought extra fans and extra passion to those games. Bourne said Utah's road trips could be longer because the travel will always be to a distant city.
The year before last, Utah lost its other regional rival in Las Vegas. The Thunder didn't have a place to play, but there is still talk of reviving that city's team.
While Moss said there won't be any expansion this year, the league is still talking to Toronto, Las Vegas and Miami about teams for the 2001-02 season.
All of this will be discussed when all of the team owners and general managers get together in Chicago next weekend. In addition, there may be some discussion about the IHL and AHL merging and every team affiliating with an NHL team. But Moss said that isn't likely to happen any time soon.
"My counterpart (league president of the AHL) Dave Andrews and I have been trying to work better together," he said, "to work more cooperatively. But a merger — that would be very complicated and won't happen this year. Our relationship probably hasn't been better in years."
He said the IHL's main order of business is figuring out a game schedule for the upcoming season without the two teams.
"Life goes on," he said. "It's business as usual."
E-mail: adonaldson@desnews.com