North Eastern Hockey League

North Eastern Hockey League

North Eastern Hockey League logo
Sport	Ice hockey
Founded	2003
Ceased	2008
Country	United States  Canada

The North Eastern Hockey League was a semi-professional ice hockey league from 2003 until 2008. It was created by entrepreneur Jim Cashman, who served as league president. The NEHL was built to focus on giving players that were not quite ready for the ECHL, United Hockey League, and the Central Hockey League a place to play and develop after their Junior and college careers had finished. In the 2003-04 season, nine total players moved up to the "AA" level and remained there and six of those players came from the York IceCats alone.

The League started with four franchises, the York IceCats out of York, Pennsylvania, Jamestown Titans out of Jamestown, New York, Mohawk Valley Comets out of Whitestown, New York and the Poughkeepsie Panthers out of Poughkeepsie, New York. After very low attendance in the first few games in Poughkeepsie, the team was to be relocated to Connecticut and renamed the Connecticut Cougars but negotiations with an arena broke down and the Cougars finished as a road team for the remainder of the season.

When concerns of Comets players not being available for the final month of the season due to their summer jobs starting, Coach Brett Boake requested a schedule change and the season was shortened a month. The Comets decided two days before the playoff weekend that they were not going to participate as not enough players were available and they had financial concerns.