Professional roller hockey team comes to Pittsburgh area

Bill Raue remembers the early days of Major League Roller Hockey in the late 1990s, when the league's championship game attracted 10,000 fans to Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, Calif.

About 15 years later, the landscape is changed, but Raue is hoping to stir up some of the old enthusiasm.

Major League Roller Hockey launched a demo “Super League” season last month, with a five-team Eastern Division playing an eight-game home-and-home schedule. One of the teams, the Pittsburgh Steel, is playing its home games at Murrysville SportZone's indoor dek hockey facility and opened its season with a 13-4 victory over the D.C. Filibusters last month. The Steel's second game, against the Philadelphia Demons, is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Murrysville SportZone's facility.

The Super League is MLRH's first league in 15 years, as the market for a league went away in the late 1990s. For the past 15 years, the organization offered a prize money circuit, featuring between 75 and 100 teams worldwide. The league also launched an Internet television network that drew 800,000 viewers in the past year.

“We were outdrawing NHL teams in some markets,” said Raue, the president and founder of MLRH. “So I kind of decided, why not roll the dice and try playing a real league again with a home-and-home schedule and a fan base, ticket sale-driven league (to) see if we can't do this?”

MLRH draws players from the professional, junior and college ice hockey ranks, as well as experienced roller hockey players. The Steel's goalie, Cody Reeve, played for the Canadian National Junior roller hockey team.

In addition to having experienced hockey players, Raue said the MLRH has a physical style of play, with hitting and other contact permitted.

“It's not roller hockey as most people play it,” Raue said. “I tell everybody (that) nobody pays money to watch flag football. It's the real thing. Our version of roller hockey is real hockey.”

Raue said he initially struggled to find a proper facility in Western Pennsylvania to host the team, but when he found out about the Murrysville SportZone arena's amenities — including stadium seating, luxury boxes and full-glass boards — he approached SportZone officials to see if they would be interested.

“We wound up there because it was the best place within 100 miles to put a team,” Raue said. “It's clean, bright, family-oriented, and we think we can put on an entertaining product.”

Mike Alton, director of operations at Murrysville SportZone, said he thought hosting a team would help the organization promote its own hockey programs.

“Roller hockey's basically up and growing still,” Alton said. “We have a lot of dek hockey in our facility. Everybody knows us for fitness and dek hockey here, but we're trying to promote our roller hockey. (Hosting a professional team) is a good way to do it.”

Raue said he knew it would take some time for the league to build up a strong audience, but he's hoping it will catch on.

“I think that (in the) short term, we're measuring our fans in the hundreds,” Raue said. “I remember putting 10,000 fans in the stands. I'm not suggesting that's going to happen next year or whatever. But we want to present the games as professionally as possible, and we think we can grow it.

“I suppose our goal is if we could approximate (Class A) minor-league baseball in the fan appeal and the way they promote the games (and be) an affordable family entertainment, that's where we want to go.”

Doug Gulasy is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at 412-388-5830, via email at dgulasy@tribweb.com or via Twitter @dgulasy_Trib.