Oklahoma City’s months long nightmare is over!  Hockey will again be played.  Canadian transplants may now rejoice.

While the details have yet to be unveiled, the city council has approved a lease, that could run as long as eleven years, at the Cox Convention Center to a group called Prodigal Hockey, LLC.

Obviously, we would be the last people to jump to conclusions, but if a group with that name intends to enter into a long-term lease at a convention center, we would guess that means they intend to play spectator hockey.  That becomes even less of a wild guess when it turns out that the leader of Prodigal Hockey, LLC is Bob Funk, Jr. who was also the owner of the now defunct Oklahoma City Blazers.

So, all the Blazers fans who have been cursing about how the Thunder’s entrance into town eliminated their staged fight quota can relax.

However, there is one question I have about this group (very likely) resurrecting minor league hockey in this town.  They were previously called Express Sports which made sense considering that it was a branch of the Bob Funk empire (built around Express Personnel).  Now, the group goes through a name change which was obviously meant as an allusion to the Biblical story of the prodigal son because, as anybody who knows House of Pain lyrics would recall, the son returned.

The thing is, the son was not called prodigal because of his yo-yo quality.  In fact, here is the primary definition of prodigal from the dictionary:

1: characterized by profuse or wasteful expenditure : lavish

See that’s the part of the story that gets left out.  The returing son took his inheritance early and basically blew it on wine and whores.  He went back to his father’s home after going flat broke in hopes he would no longer have to live on the street.

Technically, I think that Prodigal may still be an adequate name.  Express Sports was accused of bankrupting the Blazers by getting visions of grandeur that they needed to be playing in the larger Ford Center rather than the cozy, and cheaper rent, Cox.

So kudos for getting it accidently correct, guys.