Beverly businessman pushing for Worcester professional hockey

Last month, Worcester's Civic Center Commission unanimously approved a plan to bring professional hockey back to the DCU Center. The fate of a potential Worcester team is in the hands of the East Coast Hockey League and businessman Cliff Rucker.

For months, Rucker worked with City Manager Edward Augustus and DCU Center General Manager Sandra Dunn to figure out terms to bring professional hockey back to Worcester. In February, Rucker will present his plan to the ECHL board in Kalamazoo, Mich, where he will need a yes vote from 21 out of the 28 existing teams. If approved, a Worcester team could start playing in 2017.

Rucker, the sole owner and investor for the possible team, is a Danvers resident, father of five, and the president of Beverly technology lender NFS Leasing, which was founded in 2001. His now-wife introduced him to the Boston Bruins about 30 years ago, and he's been a rabid fan ever since. At one point, the family attended 30 Bruins games a year.

He became interested in ownership, and looked closely at purchasing two ECHL teams and semi-seriously at an American Hockey League (AHL) team. He ultimately decided to start a local team from scratch because he decided being able to go to games and have lots of face time as the owner was an important aspect of owning a team.

“In order to be an integral part of the community, it had to be local, quite honestly. It's much easier to purchase an existing team than to start an expansion team, as you might imagine. This is a much longer, and more arduous process,” he said. “I see minor league sports as an opportunity to integrate into a community, something with a very significant appeal to me, to give back -- that's a cornerstone for the business plan -- and hockey is my favorite sport.”

Worcester seemed like a good home for a hockey franchise because of its size, central location, and the fact that the community wants a team, he said.

“It's the second largest city in all of New England -- a fact that I certainly didn't know until I started to investigate. It's a big city, it's a city on the upswing, there's a significant amount of development, hotels, apartments, youth hockey rinks. I think the city government has done a wonderful job of making investments,” Rucker said. "And there's a void -- I wanted to start a hockey team, and they wanted a hockey team.”

The ECHL has pre-approved two new hockey franchises, so it's just a question of where those teams will be based. If approved, the team will be New England's second ECHL franchise, joining the Monarchs of Manchester, N.H.

The ECHL hosted 756 games -- with an average of 4,598 fans per game -- over the 2014-2015 season. Since its founding in 1988, the league has had more than 550 players advance to the National Hockey League (NHL).

Rucker hopes his team will have the support of Worcester's businesses.

“In minor league sports, it's critical. The relationship between the community, the city, the businesses and the teams has to be symbiotic, or it won't be successful,” he said.