Will the third time be a charm for Danbury area ice hockey fans? Probably not. Instead, the joke will be on Hat City hockey fans… and the New Haven-area hooligans who travel to Danbury Ice Arena to practice their goonism.

Balloting (if you want to call it that) for a “Name the Team” contest for Danbury’s new Eastern Professional Hockey League franchise has concluded, and the moniker will be announced with a new site launch. The problem is, Danbury franchise owners Tim Kolpien, Curtis Russell, and Igor Mrotchek in March sunk their money into a brand new league, which may or may not ever get off the ground.

Then again, according to an article in The News-Times, ticket sales are going well. They also wouldn’t tell the reporter, Rich Gregory, how many tickets were sold.

So is a sucker born every minute? Or are officials at Danbury Ice Arena cashing in on rental fees lost when James Galante lost the city’s first franchise, the UHL’s Danbury Trashers, to the feds?

That’s right, Danbury’s short professional hockey lifetime is already a tainted one.

Galante brought hockey to town, kind of as a gift for his son, A.J., who ran the team at the young age of 19. The Galante’s promised family hockey… as long as the family’s last name was “Gambino,” or your family acted like trailer trash. Orphaned New Haven hockey fans made the trip of Route 34 to watch games, and became a nightmare of the civilized, and the Danbury police force (though this use of a taser on a fan in a brawl was at a New England Stars game).

Oh yeah, family hockey? Kidding. The team was all about playing dirty to win.

Once the Trashers and Galante were brought down on fraud charges which included defrauding the United Hockey League in the Trashers’ operation, the arena filled the void with a “pro” hockey team called the New England Stars. They went undefeated in a three-team North Eastern Hockey League (ooh!), which folded soon after. The Stars were billed as a pro team, but it turned out it was a semi-pro weekend-only league.

Will hockey work this time around? I’d love to think it will. But let’s face the facts. The league is not established. The history of pro hockey in Danbury is already horrid. And if you’re a true hockey fan, you already know there is some very good hockey to watch at the Danbury Ice Arena.

There’s plenty of SWC hockey, including CIAC Division I Immaculate and the D-II Brookfield-Bethel co-op that seems to have become a team to watch. Also, Western Connecticut’s club hockey team competes against some of the area’s top ACHA programs.

Not too far from New Haven, Sacred Heart fills the Milford Ice Pavilion. Quinnipiac’s team is playing in a nice new on-campus arena in Hamden. And in New Haven, of course, Yale’s hockey tradition continues.

Real hockey fans will hit those venues, as well as other local high school and college games. And the goons of Section 102 will continue to support fly-by-night hockey in Danbury.