Adams, Padilla named winners of AHL enterprise awards

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. … The American Hockey League honored Ben Adams, senior vp and chief advertising officer of the Cleveland Monsters, and Ariel Padilla, director of ticket gross sales and advertising for the Ontario Reign, with league awards on the 2025 AHL Staff Enterprise Conferences in Indianapolis immediately.

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 vital position performed by crew administration in constructing a profitable franchise, the Ken McKenzie Award is introduced yearly to an AHL crew government who most efficiently promotes his or her personal membership.

In his 10 years with the Monsters and Rock Leisure Group, Adams has remodeled the group’s presence by means of daring imaginative and prescient and first-rate execution. He’s an ingenious strategist who has overseen campaigns which have resulted in large surges in fan engagement, media consideration and model consciousness, making the Monsters probably the most acknowledged groups within the AHL. Adams, whose tasks additionally lengthen to advertising for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and the NBA G League’s Cleveland Cost, leads the Monsters’ retail merchandise crew along with their multi-faceted content material and advertising efforts, serving to the membership attain new heights in attendance, income and standing inside the neighborhood.

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 growth 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 chargeable for overseeing the group’s ticket gross sales and advertising departments. A frontrunner by instance and a trusted mentor, Padilla has been important to the Reign’s success and accomplishments, creating 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 vp of enterprise operations for the San Jose Barracuda who handed away in January 2024.

In operation since 1936, the AHL serves as the highest growth league for all 32 Nationwide Hockey League groups. Almost 90 % of immediately’s NHL gamers are American Hockey League graduates, and greater than 100 honored members of the Hockey Corridor of Fame hung out within the AHL of their careers.