Reign Hoping for a 'Jets'-Powered Boost

While the big news out of the Ontario Reign front office Wednesday was the team’s passing on playing at Dodger Stadium, it was not the only news the Reign has made this off-season.

Last month, the Reign entered into an agreement to become an affiliate of the National Hockey League’s Winnipeg Jets (as well as the Jets’ American Hockey League affiliate, the St. John’s IceCaps).

None of that news, however, means that the Reign and Kings are on the outs, team president Justin Kemp said Wednesday. In fact, this wasn’t the first time the Reign had explored adding an affiliation. Two seasons ago, there was interest of adding an affiliation with Vancouver.

“At one point, (the Kings) were adamantly against (a second affiliate),” Kemp said. “And we just kept talking about it each year, and I think they came to a point where they understood where we were coming from and what we’re trying to do. And they know that we’re trying to run a business also, so they get that. They knew they just didn’t have the means to help us out the way we were looking for.

“They’re still our primary affiliate, and we’re still marketing ourselves as the affiliate of the LA Kings, and that makes sense for a lot of reasons. We have another avenue now to get prospects, which is great.”

Prospects was the big part of the deal for the Reign. NHL teams are limited by the amount of players they can have under contract at one time, including players at all levels of the minor leagues. Over the past few years, many of the Kings prospects have stayed in junior hockey, or played overseas. In all, Los Angeles has only sent a handful of prospects to the Reign in five seasons.

But with the second affiliation, Kemp hopes to see more young prospects coming to play at the Citizens Business Bank Arena. The Jets had previously been affiliated with the Colorado Eagles.

“(Winnipeg) wanted an affiliate where (prospects are) going to have an opportunity to play them,” Kemp said. “Colorado is … they’re very set in their ways, and they’ve been very successful. But they like to get their own guys, too. Not that we don’t like to do that, but I think we just saw this as a match made in heaven. They’re going to get an opportunity to put some good prospects here, and those prospects are going to get an opportunity to play.”

Ontario is also a familiar place for the Jets. Goaltender Chris Carrozzi, who has played most of the last two seasons for the Reign, is part of the Winnipeg system. And Winnipeg scouts are regular visitors to the arena.

“We’ve been talking about (a new affiliation) for the last couple of years or so,” Kemp said. “We had a good relationship with Winnipeg, obviously, the last two seasons. We had actually met with them about a year ago, had them out here, they still had their affiliation with Colorado, but they were looking at all sorts of different opportunities. When that deal ran out, I think they saw an opportunity.”

And Kemp knows it’s a good opportunity, especially after a season where players often were called up to the AHL, but were not sent back.

“We’re getting players. I know that there’s been some frustration, questions why we’ve seen a lot more players go up then we’ve seen come down,” Kemp said. “This is just adds another team to our repertoire that we can share players with. I think it’s going to work great.”