Sandman

Here, in full, is my story on how the Rayz’ return helps the Bees. There will be more on this later. Much more.

HIDALGO — Don’t count Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees coach Paul Fixter among the surprised that the Corpus Christi Rayz will play this season.

“I’m happy they’re coming back, well not coming back, they never really left,” Fixter said. “I think it’s great for our league to have them and I wish them well. It’s a great building, and there’s some nice players.”

When he heard last week that the Rayz, along with the Austin Ice Bats and Youngstown SteelHounds weren’t going to play in the 2008-2009 CHL season, Fixter called the league office to contact the teams’ players. Instead of getting clearance, the Bees coach was told the players were not free agents, leading to suspicion about whether the Rayz actually were going dark.

That suspicion proved correct on Monday when Corpus Christi businessman Tim Lange purchased the Rayz from Doug Frank, assuring they would play this season. With the re-addition of the Rayz, the CHL will ice 16 teams this season and the Bees’ Southeast Division should stay mostly intact, with either Texas or Odessa a possibility to replace the Ice Bats.

“I’m grateful, from a CHL employee that somebody stepped up and sees Corpus as a good hockey market with good support and good people and they’re going to give it a go,” Fixter said. “I think that’s great.”

What’s certainly great for the Bees, other than keeping one of their rivals, is that their amount of travel should stay close to where it was last season. Without the Rayz and Ice Bats, who were widely expected to not play this season, the Bees were potentially looking at longer road trips and weekend series against just one team.

Now, with the division losing just Austin, it’s likely RGV can continue playing home and home series like it did last season.

“It’s just totally the opposite of what I said last week,” Bees general manager Grant Buckborough said. “It means we’ve got our rival back, it means our fans can go travel. Everything I said last week is reversed.”

When the announcement was made, Buckborough lamented the loss of a familiar foe and the fans’ opportunity to follow the Bees. But, thanks to Monday’s news, Bees fans will still get the chance to travel to most division games.

The Bees, though, weren’t the only team that welcomed Monday’s announcement. Along with RGV, the Laredo Bucks would have been stuck in what amounted to a southern CHL outpost.

Because of Lange’s purchase, that’s something neither the Bees or Bucks will have to worry about.

“ I hate to see any teams go down the drain. It doesn’t look good on the league, it doesn’t look good for anybody,” Bucks coach Terry Ruskowski said. “I’m glad they came to a compromise and got new owners in there and hope they can get back on track. I know that (Rayz coach) Ken McRae will put a competitive team together.”

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