Eastern Hockey League (1980)
Tombstone
Born: August 1980 – EHL expansion franchise
Folded: November 11, 1980
John Mitchell Cup Championships: None
Arena
Branding
Team Colors:
Ownership
Owner: Gaetan Gagne
Background
The Syracuse Hornets were an ill-fated minor league hockey team that lasted just 10 games in the fall of 1980 before going out of business. The club, owned by local contractor Gaetan Gagne, joined the Eastern Hockey League as an expansion franchise in the summer of 1980. The Hornets replaced the departing Syracuse Firebirds (1979-1980) of the higher-level American Hockey League. But the Hornets did not take over the Firebirds’ old lease at the Onondaga County War Memorial, the longtime home of pro hockey in Syracuse. Instead the Hornets would play at the smaller, cheaper State Fairgrounds Coliseum.
The Hornets were unable to secure a parent club affiliation with an NHL team. This left Head Coach and General Manager Bill Horton, a former Syracuse Blazers player, to compile an independent roster of castoffs and tryout camp wanna-bes. Even at the relatively low level of competition in the EHL, the Hornets were desperately outclassed. They went o-9-1 in the first ten games of the season, yielding an obscene 99 goals.
The Hornets’ financial situation was equally desperate. The team sold fewer than 100 season tickets and crowds at the Coliseum numbered in the hundreds. In early November, the team ran out of funds and did not appear for road games in Baltimore and Salem, Virginia. A last ditch effort to move the Hornets to Utica fell through and the Hornets closed their doors on November 11, 1980. The team played only 10 of 72 scheduled games and folded without ever celebrating a win.
Syracuse Hornets Shop
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Hockey in Syracuse
by Jim Mancuso
Links
Eastern Hockey League Programs
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2 Responses
Has to be one of the worst, if not the worst team featured in “Fun While It Lasted”. Centre Paul Miller had a cup of coffee with the Colorado Rockies in the NHL in 1981-82, and was one of only four players to play in all 10 of the Hornets games.
The rent at the Coliseum was 1/3 that of the War Memorial stadium, plus parking was free. Horton himself even appeared in three games. Average attendance for each home game was a paltry 923 spectators.
When I was around 14 we went to a couple Hornets games (don’t recall the other teams). In one game where the away team’s uniforms didn’t show up they had to wear away uniforms of our team. A woman with a big bouffant hairdo lit her cigarette and set her hair on fire. They put it out before it got out of control but with all the hairspray it was pretty bad. We still had fun regardless of how pathetic the team was.