Last October we discovered that the long-since folded United Hockey League was eyeing a comeback, with a website and everything, including news about what areas they were looking for potential teams, a newsletter sign-up, and the claim on the league site in August that the league would be returning for the 2018-19 season.

Well, since the site launch last August and our discovery of it in October there has been absolutely ZERO news from the league and on the internet about the league. No updates on the site, no news about potential teams, no tweets on the site Twitter account since October, literally zero, not even the tiniest of breadcrumbs to possibly give us hints and let us wildly speculate about what the league might be doing.

In fact, the most notable thing about the league and its website was that shortly after our discovery of it, the league site went down for not paying the bills, always a good sign, and then suddenly re-emerged the day after the Federal Hockey League season ended.

The only thing I’ve been able to find is that the UHL logo had been slightly altered from when we found it, to how it is now.

Here’s the original UHL logo:

And here’s how it looks now on the website:

The only update being that they removed the six stars, presumably because they don’t have six teams to fill each of those stars.

I’ve done a little more digging trying to find out anything about this league, and found this hockey forum, who noted that the trademark is registered to a man named Joe Pace.

Who is Joe Pace you might be asking? Well, Joe Pace, both senior and junior, are the head coach and the player/assistant coach for none other than the Port Huron Prowlers of the previously mentioned Federal Hockey League, which raises a whole bunch of other questions, that we clearly don’t have answers to, including:

• Are the Port Huron Prowlers looking to start their own minor league?
• Or the Joe Paces just grabbing a trademark for the UHL, just in case and it’s all nothing?
• But then why go through the trouble of making a site and saying the league is coming back?
• The team is owned by Barry Soskin, who also owns Danville and Carolina, would those teams jump ship as well?
• Is the FHL possibly considering a re-brand as the UHL?

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and given that it’s been more than six months since the last update of any sort on the site, Twitter, and Facebook pages, it doesn’t bode well for the league actually coming back, in my opinion.

The site also has a contact page and a newsletter than you can sign up for, we reached out to whoever is behind the website asking if there was any updates on the league, and if they would be willing to do an interview about why they are bringing back the UHL, and have yet to hear back from anyone since sending that message over the weekend.

The biggest reason I bring all this up is that the FHL and SPHL have rumored expansion teams that are supposed to be announced sometime this week. And if they are needing at least five months to get those teams setup and established before the new season starts in October, then what chance is there that an entire league is going to start-up, along with the reported six new franchises, in less time?

Especially, like we mentioned before, almost every former UHL market has new hockey of some kind, be it FHL, UHL, NAHL, ECHL, whatever it is, almost every single market that the league previously had, is now affiliated with a different hockey league. There just aren’t a ton of available markets for Single A pro hockey in their old territory.

So to conclude, it’s been roughly nine months since the website popped up, and six months since any sort of update on the league, if I were a betting man, unless something happens before the end of the month, I wouldn’t plan on the UHL coming to your town this fall or any time soon.