SPRINGFIELD, Mass. … The American Hockey League honored Ben Adams, senior vice chairman and chief advertising and marketing officer of the Cleveland Monsters, and Ariel Padilla, director of ticket gross sales and advertising and marketing for the Ontario Reign, with league awards on the 2025 AHL Crew Enterprise Conferences in Indianapolis at this time.
Adams has been named the winner of the league’s Ken McKenzie Award for the 2024-25 season, and Padilla has been chosen because the recipient of the Frank Torres Memorial Award.
Recognizing the essential position performed by staff administration in constructing a profitable franchise, the Ken McKenzie Award is introduced yearly to an AHL staff govt who most efficiently promotes his or her personal membership.
In his 10 years with the Monsters and Rock Leisure Group, Adams has reworked the group’s presence via daring imaginative and prescient and first-rate execution. He’s an ingenious strategist who has overseen campaigns which have resulted in great surges in fan engagement, media consideration and model consciousness, making the Monsters probably the most acknowledged groups within the AHL. Adams, whose duties additionally prolong to advertising and marketing for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and the NBA G League’s Cleveland Cost, leads the Monsters’ retail merchandise staff along with their multi-faceted content material and advertising and marketing efforts, serving to the membership attain new heights in attendance, income and standing throughout the group.
The AHL’s Ken McKenzie Award, first introduced in 1978, honors Ken McKenzie, the founder and long-time writer of The Hockey Information and a 1997 media honoree by the Hockey Corridor of Fame because the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award winner. McKenzie was additionally the NHL’s first publicity director and creator of its first media information.
The Frank Torres Memorial Award is introduced to a person in recognition of excellent management in enterprise improvement or gross sales whereas exemplifying creativity, help and integrity.
Padilla started her AHL profession in 2017 as an inside gross sales consultant with Ontario and is now liable for overseeing the group’s ticket gross sales and advertising and marketing departments. A frontrunner by instance and a trusted mentor, Padilla has been important to the Reign’s success and accomplishments, growing a robust tradition of creativity, belief and help inside her departments.
The Frank Torres Memorial Award was established final season to honor Frank Torres, the vice chairman of enterprise operations for the San Jose Barracuda who handed away in January 2024.
In operation since 1936, the AHL serves as the highest improvement league for all 32 Nationwide Hockey League groups. Practically 90 p.c of at this time’s NHL gamers are American Hockey League graduates, and greater than 100 honored members of the Hockey Corridor of Fame frolicked within the AHL of their careers.
