Doing some digging on a reported new 3-on-3 professional hockey league

An interesting report surfaced on Thursday night, so I wanted to learn a bit more about it.

There was a report on Thursday from Steve Dangle that a new North American 3-on-3 hockey league would be launching this fall.

According to a video posted on Twitter/X, Dangle laid out some of the plan for a league that will feature 16 teams and have 24 minute 3-on-3 games. Perhaps most notably, a $30 million salary cap for each team.

It would be called Major League Hockey and there would also be a prize of $100,000 awarded to the winner of each game.

Dangle also laid out potential markets with teams in Arizona and Oklahoma.

There’s more in the video, which you can all see here.

Editor’s note: since this story has published, Dangle has deleted the video and issued the following statement.

Jacob Stoller from The Hockey News reported that there was funding involved from Saudi Arabia and Bauer hockey was somehow involved.

One thing that wasn’t noted in Dangle’s initial report is that there is already a 3-on-3 professional hockey league in North America.

It’s a summer circuit that’s entering its third season called 3ICE and features a collection of AHL and ECHL-level players, with a couple recently retired NHLers, like Michael Del Zotto this summer.

3ICE is has an American television deal with CBS Sports, and its championship has been aired on main CBS. Players in 3ICE make money based on weekly performance, and players on the most successful teams have a chance to make more than six figures in the summer.

For players in the AHL and ECHL, potentially making $100,000 or more in a summer circuit is enticing. I’ve spoken to several players who play in 3ICE and those checks also arrive on time each week.

3ICE has been painfully aware of what it is. It’s a television product to fill summer programming for CBS Sports, and in-person tickets have been hard to move — I’ve gone to a 3ICE event before and many people in attendance where friends or family of the players.

Here is warmups from a 3ICE event I attended in Grand Rapids, you’ll notice the lack of people in the seats.

3ICE also isn’t landing big name players, so it’s leaned hard into having former NHLers like Grant Fuhr and John Leclair as coaches.

Because I know how the 3ICE model works, I did some digging on my own of things on Friday morning to try and get a better picture of what is actually happening here.

Because as of right now, Major League Hockey doesn’t exist and there isn’t a public relations staff or any real framework publicly available to indicate they’ll actually be a league this fall.

3ICE, to give you another comp of how these things work, pushed everything back a full year because of COVID and had more than 18 months of run up time with brand building before ever playing a game.

Now someone is going around asking for funding for this league. I spoke to a source on Friday who said they first heard of this proposed league in about six or seven months ago, were asked to invest and decided not to because they didn’t think it was sustainable.

There are also documents that have been floating around and as Brad Elliott Schlossman has pointed out, there are several red flags and potential markets have changed within the last month.

Mike McMahon from College Hockey Insider, who I highly suggest subscribing too, has classified it under his “I'll believe it when I see it" folder.

NHL agent Allan Walsh initially Tweeted that he’s heard the league has “has significant financial backing,” but that Tweet has since been deleted.

Another person who has been briefed on this potential plan told me they heard the plan is for this league to feature the equivalent of bottom-six NHLers, top-line AHL players, and top KHL players.

Those players, according to the source would be only 3-on-3 professional hockey players, and no longer playing 5-on-5 hockey professionally. Which lines up with some of the challenges 3ICE has. There have been players who have wanted to participate in the 3ICE summer circuit, but weren’t able to because of contract with a 5-on-5 league in Europe.

So this proposed league would be signing free agents and playing at a time that would conflict with them playing in other leagues. Funding sports leagues is part of the Saudi Arabian playbook recently, but the efforts have been much better organized than this.

When it came to LIV golf, Greg Norman was the spokesperson that drove and pushed this. In soccer, Saudi money has purchased existing teams. Based on recent history, if Saudi money was truly involved, there would probably be a more notable hockey face getting paid right now to normalize this league, especially if it was attempting to play games in less than six months, that’s how sports washing works.

I’ve covered hockey in the south, I spent ten years covering the sport in Texas. I reached out to several hockey people about hearing about a Major League Hockey team in Texas, and the only 3-on-3 hockey mention anyone had heard of in the state of Texas was 3ICE’s event this summer in Allen.

There are people going around asking for funding for this project, I’ve been able to confirm that. But the only thing anyone I spoke to about Saudi money came from people referencing Stoller’s reporting.

This is the extent of what I know after some digging myself. Maybe there is something more. I would call the PR office or firm representing Major League Hockey to get more info, but as of now there doesn’t seem to be one.