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The 2008-09 ECHL season will be the 21st of the ECHL. The league is expected to welcome one new franchise, the Ontario Reign, which will relocate from Beaumont, Texas and will play at the Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, CA.[1] Two teams, the Columbia Inferno and the Myrtle Beach Thunderboltz, will voluntary suspend operations for the season with plans on returning in the 2009-10 season. The Myrtle Beach franchise were originally planing to return to operations, but their home arena had not been completed in time for the Board of Governors Meeting during the All-Star Break.[2] The league announced that they were immediately terminating the Pensacola Ice Pilots franchise, because the team's owners did not intend on fielding a team for the 2008-09 season or any season after that. The team was a founding member of the ECHL as the Nashville Knights and moved to Pensacola, Florida after the 1995-96 season.[3]
The league will also see the return of the Fresno Falcons to Selland Arena, after the team spent its first five seasons in the ECHL at the Save Mart Center on the campus of California State University, Fresno campus.[4].
On June 23, the ECHL announced the new divisional alignment of its 23 franchises. The league saw three teams vacate the South Division of the American Conference shrinking the division from nine to six teams and added a franchise to the Pacific Division of the National Conference increasing the division total from four teams to five. There will be thirteen teams in the American Conference, which stretches from New York south to Florida and from Mississippi east to New Jersey, and ten teams in the National Conference which stretches from Alaska south to Arizona.[5]
On June 23, the league announced its new playoff format for the 2008-09 season. The playoffs would feature a total of sixteen teams (eight from each conference) and four rounds of play. The top four finishers in each division will be seeded based on regular season point totals. The Division Semifinals will have the first seed meeting the fourth seed and the second seed meeting the third seed in a best-of-seven series. The winners of the Division Semifinals will advance to the Division Finals which is a best-of-seven series. The Division Finals winners will advance to the Conference Finals which is a best-of-seven series. The winner of the American Conference and the winner of the National Conference will meet in the Kelly Cup Finals, a best-of-seven game series. Home-ice advantage will be determined by regular season points. This format is similar to that used by the American Hockey League for the Calder Cup playoffs. [5]
