WATERLOO - In his tenure, Gino Gasparini took the United States Hockey League to unprecedented heights.

In his 13 seasons, Gasparini has taken the USHL from a league few noticed outside of the Midwest and turned it into the best junior hockey league in the United States.

For a junior hockey player, if a college scholarship and potential future in the National Hockey League is a dream, the USHL is where he wants to be.

With that said, Gasparini decided last year to step back his involvement with the USHL, ending his reign as the league's president. He will continue to run hockey operations for the unseeable future.

In order to keep the USHL rising, the leagues owners and board of directors recently tabbed Ellis T. (Skip) Prince to become the USHL's new acting commissioner.

Prince made a stop in Waterloo recently and came away impressed.

"You can't say enough about Butch (Johnson), Doug (Miller), P.K. (O'Handley) and the environment here," Prince said during the Black Hawks' home opener two weeks ago. "That opening sequence is about as good as any you will see in any NHL arena.

"Waterloo is the heart of the USHL. It is a model franchise. If we had 12 franchises like Waterloo existing, the league would be even stronger than it is now."

Prince comes to the USHL with an impressive resume. To take over the USHL, he left his own consulting firm he started in 2004.

Prior to that, he was a senior advisor in the Canadian Football League from 2001-03, and he was a partner in the law firm of Gottlieb and Schwartz in Chicago where he helped found the Arena Football League and served as its General Counsel.

His hockey resume is just as impressive. Prince spent nine years as vice president of the National Hockey League (1991-2000), where he was responsible for the league and team television and business operations, as well as many of its business development initiatives.

Prince also has been the vice president of Anschutz Properties, percursor to AEG and the parent company of the NHL's Los Angeles Kings.

"He's been around the block," Black Hawks owner Butch Johnson said. "He has a lot of good ideas."

Prince's focus with the USHL will be on the business side.

"My charge here is to make the league even bigger, even stronger," Prince said. "To try to bring more sponsors and advertisers and more fans to it. I think there is room for it.

"The hockey core in the USHL is stronger than any other league of its type. And because it has a direct relationship to the overall pyramid that leads you to the NHL, it has a reason for you to go to it.

"The USHL is special. There is not a property like it in sports. The concept where you take the very best players in the United States, put them into an NCAA friendly amatuer protected environment and give them an opportunity to get to college and eventually, maybe, the pros.

"In a lot of ways, it's better than some of the pro game. The problem with minor league hockey in a lot of places is ultimately as pure entertainment it turns into rodeo hockey. Not here."

There have been rumors the USHL is planning a major expansion in the coming years - up to as many as 16 or more teams. Prince didn't back away from saying it is a distinct possibility in the league's near future.

But he also said the USHL won't jump at expansion for the sake of expanding.

"I think what you always need to do is stabilize all the franchises you have," Prince said. "That doesn't mean we won't expand, but what it means is we aren't going to embark on some huge expansion initiative until we're sure the ownership that are currently operating are strong.

"Expansion is something we are considering and there are some dark teams out there as you know, and we'd like to be able to fill out those teams. That said, you don't want to look at a league where every year there are two new franchises in two new places."

The dark franchises Prince referred to are Rochester, St. Louis/Topeka and Ohio/Thunder Bay.

Johnson feels the tandem of Gasparini and Prince will continue to make the USHL grow.

"I'm an old Gino supporter, obviously, and we went through a lot of battles with Gino to get the league to where it is," Johnson said. "He deserves a tremendous amount of credit.

"But like anything, there comes a time to step back a little, and you have to respect Gino for that."

Contact Jim Nelson at (319) 291-1521 or jim.nelson@wcfcourier.com