LOCAL HOCKEY: Flyers now in a league of their own

DANVILLE — The Danville Flyers started play a few years back just to give Danville hockey fans a little bit of hockey action

For their third season, the Flyers will still have their charity games at David S. Palmer Arena, they will also have a chance to be part of a league.

The Flyers and the Lexington (Ky.) Nightfall have officially joined the Midwest portion of the Colonial Hockey League, which also includes the Kenosha Knights and Texas Scorpions.

“This all started late January or early February last year,” Flyers’ defenseman Brad Lyons said. “We were talking to a team in Kenosha and one in Lexington in working to get games scheduled this year. The Commissioner of the league got in touch with us at the same time and things have been slowly into the works. A team in Texas joined the conference earlier this year and us and Lexington joined last week. It sounds like there will be a team out of Chicago and a team out of Indianapolis that may join the league this year or next year.”

The Colonial Hockey League started out a few years ago as the Power Play Senior Hockey League and it started with four ousted teams from the American Premier Hockey League: Boston Gold Kings, Holyoke Papermen, Norfolk Mallards, and North Shore Nighthawks.

The Norfolk Mallards and Hudson Valley Reapers would soon join in and Kenosha became the first Midwest team to join up for the 2025-26 season.

With the new league, there will be some new games added to the schedule for home and away games. But Lyons said a lot of the games with teams from the past seasons will stay around.

“We have three road series planned this year. One in Milwaukee, one in Kenosha and one in Lexington. They will be Colonial League games except for an exhibition in Milwaukee,” Lyons said. “Some of the teams we have played before will play us and I don’t think that will change this season or the next couple of seasons as long as the league does not add more teams to the conference.

“The teams we have had a good standing with the last few seasons with our charity work we want to have them back, so we will play multiple of those teams as well. It is looking like 8-10 home games and three of them will be for Lexington and Kenosha, but outside of that, there will be the same teams we have played against.”

After play in the last few years, Lyons said if the team was going to enter the conference, it would do so in one that would make it easy for the players and their families.

“The first two years, we were excited to be doing what we were doing and last year, we were not only approached by the Colonial Hockey League, but also the APHL about joining as well,” Lyons said. “We never took them seriously to begin with because most of us are early to mid 30’s with kids. We can’t prioritize travel like younger players. When the Colonial reached us and to keep us 4-6 hours from home and once league games are done, playoffs would ensue and that would be the only time we would make a big trip.”

The Flyers will have its golf outing on Aug. 15 at Harrison Park and their first game will be on the weekend of Oct. 23rd, but Lyons said one thing will never change.

“Nothing has changed with charity. All proceeds will go to local causes,” Lyons said. “This gives us more flexibility to what we are doing and expand. Lexington was doing the same thing and we just want to keep things going.”