In case you missed it, the new minor-league hockey team coming to Baton Rouge – yes, we’re going to have minor-league hockey in Baton Rouge again – announced its name yesterday. Reactions are mixed.

The City of Baton Rouge learned the new name of its professional hockey team Thursday, July 13.

As a way to honor Louisiana’s unique culture and rich history, officials announced the team’s name is the Baton Rouge Zydeco.

…

The Zydeco is the first professional team in Baton Rouge since the Kingfish in 2003. That organization moved away after seven years of residency in the Bayou. The franchise struggled with ticket sales and fan interest which forced it to ultimately leave town.

“They had excellent attendance the first year, excellent, and it got worse every year until they were gone,” Barry Soskin said.

Soskin is the owner of the Zydeco and a long-time leader within numerous professional hockey leagues around the United States. The Midwest native is excited to bring a team to Baton Rouge, especially after seeing the turnout for the exhibition games back at the River Center in the winter.

“They averaged a little over 7,000 per game with the last one being sold out and they kept going higher and higher,” Wayne Hodes said.

Hodes is the General Manager of the Raising Cane’s River Center and says the goal is to pack at least 3,000 fans into the barn for each of the 28 Zydeco home games this fall.

Hockey is fun to watch live, and for a time the novelty of the Kingfish was something of a fad in town. The problem you have with Baton Rouge is that it’s very much a college sports town – LSU specifically, and Southern to a lesser extent, dominate everybody’s interest.

And you don’t have enough people transplanted from hockey-loving parts of the world here to really sustain a fan base for hockey. People will show up for a while because it’s something to do, but when your 28 home games coincide with the end of LSU football season and bowl games and playoffs, then LSU men’s and women’s basketball games, then the beginning of LSU baseball season, well…

It isn’t easy.

Also, Zydeco is a cool name, but to be honest, it really doesn’t have anything to do with Baton Rouge. We’ve been here a good while and we can’t ever remember hearing zydeco music in this town. Lafayette? Opelousas? Absolutely. Here?

As we said, reactions are mixed.

Nobody listened to our suggestion, which was that the team should be named the Clowns in honor of the folks who run Baton Rouge. Instead it’s the Zydeco.

Well, OK.

Here’s hoping the team has success on the field and at the box office. We’d be lying if we didn’t confess to some skepticism, though.