SPHL Winter Meeting

Decisions were made earlier this week which will affect play next season in the southern pro hockey league.

The SPHL owners held their annual winter meeting on Sunday and Monday in west Knox county, League expansion was again one of the topics discussed, "Augusta and Pensacola are very viable places that we're looking at,“ Mike Murray, Ice Bears GM said. ”And obviously nothing has been put pen to paper as of this date - we have some time frames that we're looking at to basically say we're going to grow or we're going to stay the way we are. We'd like to know before the end of our season, start of, probably before we hit playoffs would be a good time to know."

Team owners and representatives also discussed game scheduling during their meetings at the Holiday Inn select on Cedar Bluff. "We also talked about a number of things, about the number of games we're going to play next year - that's been reduced to 56, going into next year," Murray said. "There's two dates that I could chuck out as far as home dates that I'm not going to lose sleep over - and in that, there's two road games we won't have to go on."

Turning to the post season Murray says an early start is key. "We're going to start as soon as we can after the last weekend of the season. We've made it pretty clear that the first round will have to be finished by April 1st to get it in - because like we said, we're going to do a 5-game series, and then a best of 7 - so, to fit all that in - it's no big secret that playing in the south optimum building dates become less optimum after April 15th. We're going to try to make sure we accommodate the best dates possible because no one really wants a Tuesday playoff game, and we're trying to get - you know, if you finish in first place - like we intend to do, we want to make sure we have that Friday or Saturday to start off with."

The league's now in its 5th year of operating.