The Tampa Bay Lightning, and more directly the Syracuse Crunch, once again has an official affiliation with a team in the secondary minor league in North America, the ECHL.
Wednesday morning it was announced that the Lightning had come into agreement with the Kalamazoo Wings on a one-year affiliation deal. It's the first full affiliation with an ECHL team in... how long? The Lightning had a long-time partial affiliation with the Florida Everblades, but affiliation rule changes helped bring that to a close in (year). The south Florida team's affiliation now sits in full with the Carolina Hurricanes.