Changes and Uncertainty
The PSHL continued into the 1980s and 90s largely unchanged, though events that were unusual began to periodically indicate instability.
The 1980-81 season saw the entire league schedule moved up two weeks, just six games into the season, as the Reno Gamblers franchise folded abruptly amid financial concerns. It was the Gamblers' first season in the league, and the league's remaining schedule was hurriedly filled out by league officials in order to still play 18 games per team. Players from the Gamblers were disbursed amongst the other teams in the league simply by each player being deemed a free agent.
1990 saw several noted Fresno Falcons players leave the team and join an upstart Cal-Nev Senior Hockey League team known as the Fresno Aces. The Aces played two seasons in Fresno's Icelandia ice rink before folding. Only one of the departed players, Bob Barlow, would return to the Falcons.
A May 1994 game between the Fresno Falcons and Bay Area Leafs would feature a bench clearing brawl resulting in injuries to several players and one linesman in the final minutes of the second period. After nearly an hour of delays, the game continued with only a few players left on the Leafs bench. The Leafs suspended operations the next day.
The Fresno Falcons' longtime ownership group of Byron Wallace and Al Geller sold the team in 1994. A new coach, John Olver, took over the daily operations, and implemented a number of changes which would lead to the folding of the PSHL into the new, professional, West Coast Hockey League.
Read more about this topic: Pacific Southwest Hockey League, 1980-1994
Famous quotes containing the word uncertainty:
“It was your severed image that grew sweeter,
That floated, wing-stiff, focused in the sun
Along uncertainty and gales of shame
Blown out before I slept. Now you are one
I dare not think alive: only a name
That chimes occasionally, as a belief
Long since embedded in the static past.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)