Monroe Moccasins

Western Professional Hockey League (1997-2001)

Background

The Monroe Moccasins were a low-level minor league hockey team that muddled along in Northeastern Louisiana for four seasons. The Moccasins joined the Western Professional Hockey League (WPHL) as an expansion team for the league’s sophomore season in 1997-98. The WPHL operated in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas. At its peak, the league had four franchises going in Louisiana between 1998 and 2000, with clubs in Alexandria, Lake Charles, Monroe and Shreveport.

Things got off to an ominous start when the original owners of the Monroe franchise, Steve Sawin and Gavin McKinley of Austin, Texas, backed out just a few weeks after the WPHL awarded the franchise in the spring of 1997. New ownership stepped forward to save the team in June 1997, but the chaos left the Monroe club with barely three months to ramp up for their October 1997 debut.

The most experienced player on the Mocs was Brian Curran, a 1st round draft pick of the NHL’s Boston Bruins back in 1982. Curran appeared in nearly 400 NHL games between 1983 and 1994 as a journeyman defenseman. Curran skated in 68 games as a player/assistant coach for the Moccasins in their debut season of 1997-98. In 1999-00, after a year away, Curran moved behind the bench as Monroe’s head coach and earned the WPHL’s Coach-of-the-Year award.

Goaltenders Matt DelGuidice and Andre Racicot were the only other Moccasins players who ever saw action in the NHL.

The End

The Moccasins posted winning records in all four seasons of play. But attendance dwindled steadily each season, from a high of 3,178 in the club’s debut season to fewer than 2,000 per game in 2000-01. The team spent all of the 2000-01 in default on its rent of the Monroe Civic Center. The Mocs nearly withdrew from the league in midseason and only made it to the finish of the regular season in March 2001 with the help of a financial bailout from the league.

The WPHL itself was in freefall by the early 2000’s. Six franchises folded between 1999 and early 2001. The beleaguered organization merged itself into the Central Hockey League in May 2001. Meanwhile, Moccasins owner Todd Newman, whose investor group took over the troubled club in early 2000, announced a “Save The Moccasins” season ticket campaign. The effort raised only 653 season ticket pledges against a goal of 2,500. Two weeks after the CHL-WPHL merger, Newman announce the Moccasins would suspend operations for a year. The club was never heard from again.

Links

Western Professional Hockey League Media Guides

Western Professional Hockey League Programs

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