It was announced in late January that the Manchester Monarchs would be moving out to Ontario, California and will be swapping home venues with Ontario’s current ECHL affiliate hockey team The Reign following this season. The Monarchs are currently the AHL affiliate of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings, and they are making the move to be closer to the parent team, making it easier to call players up to LA. The current Monarchs players will become the Reign, and the current Reign squad will become the Monarchs.

Saint A’s senior, Dominique Del Prete, currently works for the Monarchs in the Verizon Wireless Arena’s video control room. She said that while it will be a change, Manchester will still have hockey and they will still have the Monarchs.

“There will still be good quality hockey in New Hampshire, and that is what is important because Manchester is a great spot for hockey. Even though it will be a swap in players, the team will still be the Monarchs,” said Dominique.

Dominique also said that most of the arena’s staff would continue to work for the Monarchs come next season when the new team arrives and emphasized that the only major change will be the swap in players.

She started with the team as an intern her sophomore year working for the video control room as a Game Night Assistant. Dominique was hired the following year to her current job controlling graphics and scoreboard cameras in the video control room. Some of her specific duties are updating graphics, updating the out of town scores, and operating the dome camera during promotional timeouts and dance cam.

Dominique said that one of her favorite jobs is to operate the scoreboard camera. “It is a lot of fun to find kids in the crowd during intermission dance cam and see their reactions when they get put up on the board,” Dominique said.

Dominique loves her job in the arena, and will continue working for the team when the new ECHL Manchester Monarchs arrive next season.

Be sure to head down to The Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester to check out the AHL Monarchs for the remainder of their last season in New Hampshire, and then check out the new ECHL Monarchs come next season.