Manchester Monarchs

American Hockey League (2001-2015)
East Coast Hockey League (2015-2019)

Tombstone

Born: September 29, 1999 – The dormant Cornwall Aces franchise relocates to Manchester, NH
Folded: May 15, 2019

First Game: October 5, 2001 (L 6-3 @ Lowell Lock Monsters)
Last Game: May 6, 2019 (L 5-1 @ Newfoundland Growlers)

Calder Cup Champion (AHL): 2015
Kelly Cup Champions (ECHL): None

Arena

Verizon Wireless Arena (9,916)¹

Marketing

Team Colors: Purple, Gold, Silver, Black & White²

Radio:

2008-09: WGAM (1250 / 900 AM)

Radio Broadcaster:

2008-09: Ken Cail

Mascot: Max (the Lion)

Ownership & Affiliation

Owners:

2001-2016: Los Angeles Kings (Philip Anschutz & Edward Roski)
2016-2019: PPI Sports LLC (Marc Casper, et al.)

NHL Affiliation: Los Angeles Kings

Record Book

Les Cunningham Award (AHL Most Valuable Player):

2014-15: Brian O’Neill

Background

The Manchester Monarchs were a wildly popular minor league hockey attraction in southern New Hampshire during the early 2000’s. In September 1999 former Hartford Whalers and Pittsburgh Penguins owner Howard Baldwin announced plans to acquire the American Hockey League’s dormant Cornwall Aces club and move it to the Queen City. Manchester had a new 9,800-seat downtown arena set to open in late 2001. The AHL, at the time, had a major presence in New England, offering nearby rivals in Portland, Maine, Lowell and Worcester, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island.

Baldwin ended up selling the franchise to Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), owners of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings, in June 2000 more than a year before the team was set to take the ice. AEG announced the club would be known as the Monarchs and serve as their top minor league affiliate.

On Ice

The Monarchs were an immediate hit on the ice and at the box office upon their debut in October 2001. In their first four seasons of play, the Monarchs led the AHL in attendance three times, peaking at 9,141 fans per game during the 2003-04 season.

Manchester was consistently strong on the ice as well. The Monarchs, incredibly, posted 18 consecutive winning seasons from 2001 until the team’s demise in 2019.

The playoffs were another story though. Despite fourteen straight winning seasons in the AHL, the Monarchs advanced beyond the 1st round of the Calder Cup playoffs just three times and suffered 10 first round exits. In their final season in the AHL in 2014-15, the Monarchs finally claimed their first and only championship, besting the Utica Comets 4 games to 1.

Top prospects Dustin Brown (Monarchs ’04-’05), Alec Martinez (Monarchs ’08-’11) and Jonathan Quick (Monarchs ’07-’08) all went on to long NHL careers with the Kings and helped L.A. to their Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and 2014.

Franchise Swap & Demise

Attendance inevitably waned from honeymoon years of the early 2000’s. Average attendance fell below 6,000 per game for the first time during the Great Recession season of 2008-09 and never again surpassed that level

But the Monarchs’ fortunes truly headed south in January 2015 when the Kings ownership announced what amounted to a swap of their primary and secondary farm clubs. The AHL franchise would move went to Ontario, California in order to move the Kings’ top prospects closer to L.A. In return, Manchester would receive L.A. lower-level ECHL farm club that had been playing in Ontario as the Ontario Reign. Both teams would keep their original names, so starting in the fall of 2015, the Manchester Monarchs would become the Kings’ second-tier farm team in the ECHL.

Several months after the announcement, the Monarchs won their only Calder Cup in what everyone already knew would be their final AHL season.

New Hampshire fans did not take to the lower-quality ECHL product. AEG sold off the Monarchs to an inexperienced Massachusetts-based group in the summer of 2016. Attendance cratered more sharply after the sale. By the 2018-19 season, Manchester’s average crowd of 2,458 per contest ranked 26th out of the ECHL’s 27 teams.

The Monarchs folded on May 15th, 2019, nine days after playing their final game.