The official end to the 2016-17 season is approaching pretty quickly. The Railers inaugural season is approaching quickly, just 128 days from this posting.

Railers Job Openings

Now that the Railers have their mascot, head coach, and NHL affiliate, they are now working on hiring for their front office and hockey operations. Just last week they hired Terry Bangen to an assistant coach role. As I started writing this, the Worcester Railers announced they had hired Paul Harris as their new Community Relations Coordinator. You can read their press release here.

As listed on the ECHL’s website, here are the current job openings for the Railers:

Some other positions we expect appointments, hires, or job listings over the summer:

  • Equipment Manager
  • Medical Staff

Player Signings

As we mentioned in our post on Sunday, the Worcester Railers can start signing players beginning on June 16. We can expect at least one on that day and more throughout the summer.

Railers Home/Away Jerseys

One of the biggest things the Railers have yet to unveil is their jerseys. With just a few months from Opening Night, we haven’t heard much about them. I will be making the prediction that we may see a preview or perhaps an unveiling of the jerseys at the Worcester Bravehearts Hockey Night on July 22. We saw the unveiling of Trax, the Railers mascot and it was a membership event so all members got free tickets to the game. Since the Railers and Bravehearts are teaming up for another event this year, it would only make sense to have something similar this year.

I have been playing around with some possible designs for these jerseys for the fun of it and will be sharing them next week, so stay tuned!

Promo Schedule

Another thing fans can look forward to this summer is the Promo Schedule. It is expected to be released before the start of the season. At a quick glance we see the Railers are playing home games on Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a specialty jersey on either of those nights. It was common especially in the IceCats days for that. I know it has been said at previous events that the Railers don’t want to do a lot of the same promotions that the Sharks did, so I won’t go into specifics on what other promotions will probably be. We can expect promotions during their 3 Day Weekend Games in November, January, February, and March.

DCU Center Upgrades

Another phase of upgrades for the DCU Center is expected to be completed by the end of this summer. These upgrades include WiFi throughout the facility and the installation of a new scoreboard in addition to the already completed upgrades to the lighting system.

ECHL Summer Meetings

Lastly, the ECHL’s summer meetings are next week. There’s a good chance the Board of Governors will be voting to bring at least one new franchise to the league, and we expect that to be Portland’s team. We don’t expect much to come out of these meetings other than that but we’ll be sure to keep you posted.