Long Prairie is a town a little northeast of Alexandria with a population of about 2,800. It is home to 900 seat Todd County Arena which will be the home arena for the Paladins.

They will be called the "Paladins" after the name won a "Name The Team" contest in the local paper, the Long Prairie Leader. Their logo is a monogram of the towns initials LP. Their uniforms feature the team name diagonally on the front with the LP logo on the shoulders. Their team colors are navy, silver, and white.

And that completes the inaugural Central Hockey Association.

Aurora is a town in the Iron Range with a population of right around 2,000. It is located only 5 miles west of Hoyt Lakes and a number of players used to wear the red white and blue of the Wolves before finally getting a team of their own at long last. The Lights will play their home games at the 500 seat Aurora Community Center.

They will be called the "Lights", a reference to the Northern Lights, aka Aurora Borealis. Their logo is an A for Aurora next to a stick that doubles as an L for Lights and a puck. The lights have a bright color scheme to reflect their name of navy, purple, light blue, and green.

We head to the City of Lakes for our next team. Nokomis is a neighborhood in southeast Minneapolis that takes its name from the famous Lake of the same name. For years, the southern part of Minneapolis has been almost exclusively Miller territory, helping the boys in black and orange become one of the most successful teams in MAHL history. This also left a lot of good talent without a team since the Millers could only have so many men on a roster and playing for a rival would be sacrilege. For years, the Millers have thwarted any attempts at another team in southern Minneapolis, but finally a group was able to gain enough public support to get into the TCHL whether the Millers wanted them or not. The Skippers will play their home games at 500 seat Minnehaha Ice Arena.

The team will be called the "Skippers" in honor of Lake Nokomis, the lake which the neighborhood is named after. Their logo really hammers home the nautical theme using an anchor inside of a ship wheel with an N for Nokomis over the anchor. In an attempt to be completely different than any other Minneapolis team, the Skips decided to go with blue as their primary color along with gold and white.

We round things out with Windom. Windom is a town of over 4,500 in southwest Minnesota. They will be joining the BEHL and will play their home games in one of the biggest arenas in the southern part of the state, 2,500 seat Windom Ice Arena.

They will be called the "Woodpeckers" named after the bird native to the area. The Peckers logo is a Pileated Woodpecker head in the team colors of black and red. They also have a secondary W logo as well as a full body Woodpecker.


That concludes the 1987 Offseason, let me know what you think!