Pour one out for the Carolina Hockey Alliance.
This never-ending year may have skewed your sense of time, but it was only 17 months ago that the Carolina Hurricanes signed an affiliation agreement with the ECHL’s Greenville Swamp Rabbits, an arrangement that was trumpeted with a glowing Greenville press release regaling the possibilities for prospect development and marketing synergy all along the I-85 corridor from Greenville to Raleigh. Now, it seemed, the Alliance - which was capitalized despite never, as far as anyone can tell, being any sort of an official arrangement - would lead to great things for hockey in the Carolinas.