Six ideas that will not end up in the trinket drawer, from people who have
received a lot of bad hockey gifts.
Buying for a hockey fan is harder than it looks. The obvious gifts have all
been given already, and the first page of any search will hand you the same
generic merchandise everyone else is looking at. What follows goes past that,
including apparel your recipient almost certainly does not know exists.
We put this together the direct way, by asking our own staff of hockey
obsessives what they would actually want to receive. You don't need to know
the sport to give a good hockey gift. You just need to know where to look.
What do you get the fan who has seen it all? Something they have never seen
before. Minor league hockey has been running in the United States and Canada
since the early 1900s, and hundreds of teams have come and gone in that time,
very likely including one in your recipient's own state or city. The logos and
the stories behind them are strange enough that one of them will land.
That's what we do. Apparel for defunct minor league teams, covering more than
40 states and every Canadian province. We like the current sport fine, but we
care more about the clubs nobody kept a record of. Putting those logos back
into circulation is how the teams stay in the conversation. Somebody wearing
an
Albany River Rats shirt
or a
Kentucky Thoroughblades hoodie
gets asked about it, which is the whole point.
Not sure where to start? Use
shop by state
to find the defunct teams from your recipient's area, which turns a gift into
a piece of local history they didn't know about. Or browse
every team A to Z.
All of our apparel is worth giving, but nothing lands like a
retro hockey jersey.
Many of ours exist nowhere else, because nobody else is focused this narrowly
on defunct hockey. They're modern replicas built to carry the spirit of the
original designs, and having worn a lot of jerseys over the years, we can tell
you these hold up both on the ice and off it.
The part we care most about is getting them right. We work from old
memorabilia, photographs, and conversations with people who were actually
there, and we stay as true to the original as the record allows while adding
the occasional deliberate flourish.
Buying equipment is intimidating if you don't play, but it doesn't have to be.
Hockey Monkey
and
Pure Hockey
both carry everything, and Bauer and Warrior are the safest brands to buy
blind, since they've been the players' favorites for years. Equipment is also
more than skates, sticks, and pucks. Helmets, gloves, pads, and even tape all
make sense as gifts.
Gear is expensive. If you want a cheaper and greener route,
Sideline Swap
is a marketplace for used and new equipment, started by college athletes who
had firsthand experience of what the stuff costs.
4. Game Tickets
Giving experiences instead of objects has become the default in a lot of
families, and for a hockey fan the experience is a game.
SeatGeek
and
Ticketmaster
are the obvious places to start. On both, find the event categories across the
top of the homepage, choose sports, then filter to hockey.
A Long Island Ducks ticket from Long Island Arena.
It helps to know which arenas near you host hockey at all. And don't assume
the NHL is the only option. The American Hockey League, ECHL, Federal
Prospects Hockey League, and Southern Professional Hockey League all put on a
good night out for considerably less money, and the buildings are usually
better for it.
Team websites are worth checking directly, since they sometimes carry deals
and season packages you won't see elsewhere, though they'll often reroute you
to Ticketmaster anyway. Groupon occasionally has discounts worth the two
minutes it takes to look.
5. Vintage Souvenirs and Collectibles
Everyone has one mug or one glass they reach for first. A gift that gets used
every single day is the one worth giving, and drinkware is the easiest way to
get there.
Our
pint glasses
run to over 200 logo options, with a standing offer that takes 62% off the
second glass when you buy two. The
coffee mugs
are durable and the colors are vivid. Both are hand wash only, and we would
rather tell you that now than have you find out later.
For a smaller gift or a stocking stuffer,
our Koozies
do the job. And our
collectible pucks
are official Inglasco pucks with our own designs, generally $19.99, though
they sometimes ship free with a pre-order jersey.
Collectible pucks, printed on official Inglasco blanks.
When you genuinely don't know,
a gift card
is the honest answer, and every site mentioned above sells one. The trick is
in the presentation, because a card on its own reads as an afterthought even
when it isn't.
Tuck it inside a Koozie. Or build it into a small basket with a
Koozie,
a
pint glass,
and a
six pack.
The same idea works with a
mug
and a bag of their coffee.
Retro hockey apparel works as a gift because it comes with something attached.
A funny name, a logo nobody else has, or a team that played six blocks from
where your recipient grew up and that they have never once heard of. Vintage
doesn't go out of style, and it starts conversations, which is more than most
gifts manage.
And if you can't settle on one shirt, there is no shame in the gift card. Let
them go through the archive and find their own team.
Over 40 states, every Canadian province, and a few hundred teams that
stopped playing a long time ago.
The 12 Best Minor League Hockey Jerseys From Defunct Franchises
Tiger stripes, a trash can, a monster clawing through the front of a sweater,
and nine more from teams that no longer exist.
Minor league hockey has always been where the strange jerseys live. No
century-old sweater to defend, no national broadcast to embarrass, and a
marketing department consisting of two people and a deadline. What comes out
the other end is a design nobody in the NHL would ever have approved, and
that is exactly why these are the ones people still want on their backs.
This list was put together by lifelong hockey fans who love the eccentricities
of the American minor leagues. Every team here is defunct. Most of them we can
put on a jersey for you, and where we can't, we said so.
The Thoroughblades first took the ice at Rupp Arena for the 1996โ97
season, in a color and logo combination that had no equal anywhere in pro
sports: teal, purple, and silver, with an angry muscular horse on skates. It
was very 1996, and it has aged into something better than that. Plenty of
Kentuckians wore the merchandise without ever seeing a game.
The team drew crowds of 8,000 early on, and gave them something to watch.
Winning seasons and playoff appearances in all five Kentucky years, with
Zdeno Chara, Jonathan Cheechoo, Dan Boyle, and Evgeni Nabokov passing through.
By year three they won 44 games with Nabokov and Miikka Kiprusoff splitting
the net. Johan Hedberg joined that tandem in 1999โ2000 for another
40-win season, and both years ended in the second round.
What finished them was the gate. Attendance slid from 8,000 a night to 4,500,
the owners sold, and the club became the Cleveland Barons. The franchise is
still going as San Jose's Barracuda.
The Chill may be the most consequential team on this list. They joined the
ECHL in 1991 with an ad campaign that ran from outlandish to borderline
offensive, and it worked immediately. A sellout streak began in January 1992
and ran 83 games. Eighty percent of every game in franchise history sold out.
They were not a great team, but when a playoff game came along their building
could not hold the crowd, and management turned that into a campaign for a new
arena. Fans backed it, the NHL noticed, Columbus got a franchise, and the
Chill were finished off by their own success.
The jerseys carried the same attitude. An icicle design of diagonal triangles
that has never been copied since, and the word CHILL printed vertically down
the front. They were also early to the alternate jersey, running tie-dye,
Roman numerals, and most famously the Columbus Mad Cows sweater.
One of the best logos in hockey and one of the best names, attached to a
jersey design that is honestly pretty plain. It does not matter. The logo and
the name carry it, and the sweaters are still among the most sought after
minor league jerseys going.
The Rats had a two-decade run in Albany. Affiliated first with New Jersey,
which sent Patrik Elias, Zach Parise, Brian Gionta, and Mike Dunham through
the roster, and dressed in red, white, and black Devils-style sweaters
through the 1990s and early 2000s. When the affiliation moved to Carolina the
colors stayed but the Hurricanes flag pattern arrived.
One footnote. The Rats essentially never changed jerseys, but there is a
lost design: a black sweater with rat footprint shoulder patches, prototyped
and then killed late by an executive. Search eBay hard enough and one surfaces
every few years.
This list would have no credibility at all without the Trashers. The logo is a
trash can. That tells you most of what you need to know about how seriously
this team took the conventions of the sport. Their saga began in 2004, when an
alleged mobster bought the franchise as a seventeenth birthday present for his
son, AJ Galante, and it lasted two seasons before folding.
What they packed into those two seasons is the reason the Netflix docuseries
Untold: Crime & Penalties gave them an episode. Pranks designed to
rattle visiting teams, a fire alarm pulled in the middle of the night before a
game, and penalty minutes in quantities that look like typos.
Galante has said
the hardest thing to hear was that the team had no talent, because by his
account players were lining up to sign, drawn by exactly the reputation that
made everyone else assume otherwise.
The documentary sent Trashers merchandise through the roof, helped along by
Drake wearing the jersey on Instagram. The trash can aside, the black, blue,
and silver scheme is genuinely original and looks like nothing else from the
era. Their legacy is not a tidy one, between the alleged under-the-table
payments and the injuries they handed out, but they are one of the most
legendary minor league teams that has ever existed.
A Colonial Hockey League team out of Madison, Wisconsin, with four seasons
from 1995 to 1999 and a logo that is pure mid-nineties: bright, loud, and
depicting a monster tearing out through the front of a jersey. Fans bought it
in quantity before the team had played a game. The stranger choice was the
jersey itself, which was pinstriped, something almost no hockey team does.
The Monsters are remembered for the logo, and for their Broad Street Bullies
connections. Mark Johnson got the team established and left after a season,
and the 1996โ97 side was led by former Flyer Dave Schultz. They made
headlines again when Reggie Leach dressed for a game at 47, ten years into
retirement, which may make him the only player in history with a decade
between his two final seasons. The franchise moved to Knoxville in 1999 and
became the Speed.
Untangling the Clippers takes a minute. They appear first in the Eastern
Hockey League for 1945โ46, playing at Carlin's Iceland, and won the
Walker Cup in 1947โ48. The franchise folded in December 1949, restarted
for 1954โ55, and then hit its next wall in January 1956 when Carlin's
Iceland burned down midseason. Without a building, the Clippers moved to
Charlotte.
The revival is the version people remember. Reborn in the AHL in 1962 in
orange and black, borrowed from the city's baseball team, with a sailor logo
that is one of the best ever drawn for a hockey club. They lasted in the AHL
through 1975 and took the regular season title in 1970โ71. Then the NHL
affiliates dried up and AHL operating costs climbed, so they jumped to the SHL
for 1976โ77 to save on league fees and travel. The SHL folded in January
1977, midseason, and the Clippers went with it.
Hall of Fame alumni include Ed Giacomin, Doug Harvey, Jacques Plante, and Jean
Ratelle.
The Nighthawks joined the AHL for 1972โ73 as the first team to play in
the New Haven Coliseum, and stayed there through 1992. Their jerseys are the
most conventional on this list, with an ordinary stripe pattern, but the logo
is a classic: a symmetrical bird, wings and feet out, beak dead center. Very
clean, very well drawn.
The logo never changed. The colors did, following the parent club. Gold and
blue at the start, which matched nothing about the Minnesota affiliation. Red
and blue from 1977 with the Rangers, who at least were down the road. Silver
and black in the mid-eighties with Los Angeles.
New Haven Nighthawks 1970s blue and gold replica jersey.
We don't carry Vipers merchandise, and we still couldn't leave them off. The
teal, red, and black is unlike anything else from the period, and the viper
logo is one of the better pieces of design the IHL ever produced.
They ran from 1994 to 2001 out of the Palace of Auburn Hills, and got their
name from a Chrysler sponsorship tied to the Dodge Viper, which tells you
something about how the operation was run. They set an early IHL attendance
record, beat an NHL all-star team during the lockout, brought Gordie Howe out
of retirement for a single shift at 69, and won the Turner Cup in 1997.
9. Tallahassee Tiger Sharks
Relocated from Huntsville, Alabama, the Tiger Sharks played seven seasons at
the Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center starting in 1994โ95. The
rebrand produced a jersey with no equal: they threw out the traditional
horizontal stripes and put tiger stripes on instead. It is one of the hardest
designs we have ever had to reproduce. The red, white, and black underneath it
is a winner too.
They were good right away, winning 36 or more games and reaching the playoffs
in each of their first three seasons. In 1995โ96 they set a team record
with 42 wins and got to the third round before losing to Charlotte, who went
on to win it. Crowds ran over 6,000 a night.
The end was strange. Attendance dipped, and in their final Tallahassee season
of 2000โ01 the team was docked $50,000 and fifteen points in the
standings for circumventing the salary cap by making payments to NHL and AHL
clubs for players. They moved to Georgia after that season.
Everything about this jersey screams 1995. The fonts, the colors, the
mean-looking frog. It could not have come from any other decade.
The RiverFrogs started play in 1995 with a small fan base and an enthusiastic
one. WLKY's coverage of the team described the mascot as kitschy and alarming,
which gives you a fair picture of what attending a game alongside a large
inflatable lime green frog was like. The jerseys and the frog were not even
the strangest part of the operation, which at one point involved hot tubs in
the arena. None of it was enough. They lasted three seasons in Louisville.
The Bandits arrived in Baltimore behind fifty years of Clippers and Skipjacks
hockey, which is a lot to follow. They then had to share a building with an
indoor soccer team that owned the weekend dates. Two seasons later they were
sold and moved to Cincinnati.
What survives is the jersey. Black, white, silver, and purple, with a bandit
raccoon that people bought regardless of whether they followed the team, on
the strength of the logo and the city's hockey habit alone.
They managed two designs in two seasons. The first is the one pictured, with a
diagonal stripe across the chest, which is a rare thing on a hockey sweater.
The second kept the raccoon and the diagonal but ran a gradient through it,
because it was the nineties and everybody was trying something.
Full disclosure on the last one: this is not a real jersey design. It's ours.
But it's for a real team. The Norsemen lasted a single season, 1975โ76,
with a terrific Viking logo and a secondary shield logo, and then somehow
wore sweaters that didn't feature either one. We fixed that.
We offer the original white version as well, but the green jersey in the shop
is our design, built around the Viking. The bright green and yellow is a
standout, and it is what the team should have been wearing in the first place.
One more thing. Despite the name, they did not play in Buffalo. Home was the
Tonawanda Sports Center in North Tonawanda, New York. They went 30โ44
and lost in the first round.
Our own Buffalo Norsemen design, built around the Viking logo.
Twelve is nowhere near enough. There are hundreds of these, and half of them
deserve a paragraph of their own.
Tell us your favorite,
and tell us which one you want us to recreate. We have made jerseys off far
stranger requests than whatever you're about to send.
Every jersey we make comes from a team that no longer exists.
Marquette Iron Rangers Hockey: The Stories of Karen Koch, Coach Leonard โOakieโ Brumm, and the Carlson Brothers
A semi-pro team in Michiganโs Upper Peninsula that won five championships,
hired the first woman ever paid to play hockey, and put three brothers on
screen in the best hockey movie ever made.
In October 1969, four goaltenders skated out for tryouts at the Palestra in
Marquette, Michigan. One of them was a slight, quick eighteen-year-old with
obvious skill, and it took the captain pointing it out before coach Leonard
โOakieโ Brumm realized she was a woman. By the end of the season
Karen Koch had been paid, heckled, cheered, and released, and she had become
the first female hockey player in history to earn a paycheck.
She is one of three reasons the Marquette Iron Rangers are worth your time.
The team took the ice from 1964 to 1976 in the United States Hockey League,
won five championships, and collected a cast of characters wildly out of
proportion to its size: a coach who founded a hockey league in Kuwait and ran
another one inside a state prison, and three brothers who would skate straight
from the Upper Peninsula into Slap Shot.
The Iron Rangers came together in 1964 out of nothing more complicated than a
group of local players who wanted to stop leaving town to play. Brumm has said
he had decided he was done going away for hockey, and that Marquette wanted a
senior team of its own.
โThe people in Marquette wanted a senior team.โ
Leonard โOakieโ Brumm, recalling the founding
He put the organization together with Dewey St. Cyr, Jack McCracken, and Bill
Todd. The USHL would not grant the franchise until the group could guarantee
eight hundred season tickets sold, a condition meant to keep both team and
league solvent. Marquette cleared it, and the Iron Rangers made their home
debut in October 1964 with a 5โ3 loss to the Green Bay Bobcats.
The building had its own history. The Palestra had housed some of the earliest
professional hockey in North America, including the Calumet Miners from 1904
to 1907 in the International Professional Hockey League, the first fully
professional league anywhere. Sixty years on, it was still unheated. The Iron
Rangers warmed it for the first time in 1964 using four large portable heaters,
with the fire departmentโs permission.
Koch grew up in Gibraltar, Michigan, near Detroit, where no team would give her
a tryout. In 1969 she enrolled at Northern Michigan University in Marquette,
and some accounts hold that she chose the school for its proximity to the
Palestra and the Iron Rangers. When the team held open tryouts that October,
she showed up in full gear.
Brumm was coming off a championship season and watched four goaltenders take
the ice. Brian Lunney, on loan from the Toronto Maple Leafs and a product of
Canadaโs Olympic system, was a lock to start. Of the rest, one was a
young man with little athletic ability, one was a local named Lonnie
Lytaikainen with some potential, and one was a five-foot-five goaltender who
was quick and plainly skilled. That was Koch, and Brumm did not know she was a
woman until his captain, Brian Cook, told him.
What followed was, by his own account, one of the few times in his life he did
not know what to do. He worried about injury, about where she would change,
about how good she actually was. None of it was a reason to cut her.
โShe had done nothing to justify cutting her.โ
Leonard โOakieโ Brumm, recalling the 1969 tryout in 2000
So he gave her a fair look, and she earned a spot. She also turned out to have
a quality Brumm had not anticipated. Once word got out that the Iron Rangers
had a woman in net, Brumm and the rest of the league saw the gate receipts
coming. Goaltending was the position for daredevils, and crowds would travel
to watch her. Brumm carried seventeen skaters and three goaltenders that
season so there would be room for her, at forty dollars a game. No woman had
ever been paid to play hockey before.
Koch told interviewers she loved the game enough that she would have played
for free. She had tried to get into senior leagues repeatedly and been turned
away every time.
The season took a toll. Her own teammates were not behind Brummโs
decision, and they called her names and needled her constantly, though Brumm
noted that even the worst of them eventually came around. If that was the
treatment from her own bench, the heckling from opposing rinks and the
coverage in the press can be imagined. At one point she was
taking tranquilizers before games
to steady her nerves. She did not think of herself as a novelty act. She
thought of herself as a goaltender.
Proving it took an exhibition game, filling in for Lunney, in which she stopped
everything she faced. After that it moved quickly. Before a game in Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario, the Canadian Soo insisted she start, and the townโs
mayor, a well-known former player, asked Brumm to let him take a penalty shot
against her before the opening faceoff. Brumm agreed. The building filled. Koch
stopped him cold, got a standing ovation, and the mayor was booed off the ice.
She stopped ten of twelve shots in the first period and Marquette won 5โ3,
and nobody in the press wanted to talk about the score.
Everyone was getting what they wanted. Koch was being recognized for her
goaltending rather than her gender, and the Iron Rangers were selling out
buildings. Before a game in Green Bay later that season the auxiliary police
had to be called in to handle the crowd, and Green Bay had phoned ahead to ask
that she start.
Then came the part that ended it. Photographs of Koch from that season show
stitches, scars, and black eyes. Brumm pushed her to wear a mask and more
protective equipment. She refused, saying she saw better without one. Call it
reckless or call it stubborn, but it became enough of a problem that Brumm
released her with ten games left in the season.
The Iron Rangers won the USHL championship that year. Koch tried to keep
playing in Canada and was eventually barred from menโs hockey. She earned
a bachelorโs and a masterโs in English literature from the
University of Dayton, and holds a black belt in judo. Beyond that the record
thins out, largely because she has wanted it to. She got as much limelight in
1969 as anyone could want and has lived quietly since.
The Hockey Life of Coach Leonard โOakieโ Brumm
Brumm could carry a post of his own, and in fairness he already wrote one
himself. He was an army veteran who played tennis and hockey at the University
of Michigan, founded the Kuwait National Hockey League, inspired a plot point
in Slap Shot, served as athletic and recreation director at Marquette
Branch Prison, wrote We Only Played Home Games, and coached the Iron
Rangers. At the end of his life he was editing a hockey newspaper and coaching
high school hockey while fighting pancreatic cancer.
He grew up in Marquette and spent most of his life building things there. With
the Iron Rangers he worked constantly with Northern Michigan students, young
men trying to sort out what came next. Inside the prison he worked with young
men paying for decisions already made, and he started a hockey league for them,
the
Marquette Prison Pirates.
The distance between those two benches is the thing people bring up whenever
his name comes up in hockey circles.
Wherever he was and whatever he was doing, he found a way to use the game on
the people around him. That is a better legacy than five championships.
Jeff, Jack, and Steve Carlson spent the 1973โ74 season together in
Marquette under Brumm before working their way around the hockey circuit and,
eventually, into a movie. Slap Shot turned them into the Hanson
Brothers. Jeff and Steve played the parts modeled on themselves. Jack was in
the WHA playoffs when filming started, so Dave Hanson, whose real surname the
characters carry, took the third chair.
Away from Hollywood, each of them had a real career. Steve played 225 games in
the WHA with the Whalers, Oilers, and Fighting Saints, and in the NHL with the
Los Angeles Kings, and despite a few scattered fights he was regarded as a
finesse player. Jack played in the WHA for the Fighting Saints, Oilers, and
Whalers and in the NHL for the North Stars and Blues, and collected 1,111
penalty minutes doing it. Jeff had the shortest run of the three, with the
Fighting Saints in the WHA and then minor league stops that included the
Johnstown Jets, Mohawk Valley Comets, Phoenix Roadrunners, and Muskegon
Mohawks.
Dave Hanson, the fourth Carlson, played for the Birmingham Bulls in the WHA
and appeared for the Red Wings and North Stars in the NHL. Since 1977, Jeff
and Steve Carlson and Dave Hanson have spent decades touring minor league
rinks together, which is its own kind of career.
The Legacy of the Iron Rangers
Twelve seasons, five championships, and a building that predated the sport as
a professional concern. The Iron Rangers hired the first woman ever paid to
play hockey. They were run by a man who started leagues on two continents and
inside a prison. They put three brothers on a roster who would go on to be the
most quoted characters in hockeyโs best movie. Call it shrewd promotion
or call it luck, but a semi-pro club in the Upper Peninsula ended up touching
more of hockey history than most franchises three times its size.
Wear the team. Iron Rangers tees, hoodies, and hats, drawn from the real thing.
Our regular orย non-premium t-shirtsย are what we originally started the site with. These are Fruit of the Loom 3930 tees that are a heavy and thick feeling style of t-shirt. We find that a lot of our customers like these when they are looking for a shirt that has a sturdy, thick feel to it. These shirts are not labeled as standard or non-premium, but you will know them since they will not say 'premium' anywhere in the title. They are also handy as many of the colors we offer are available in sizes up to 6XL. However, we received feedback that some customers were interested in thinner, lighter feeling tees.ย
Our premium t-shirts were introduced recently toย provide an option for a lighter and thinner feel of t-shirt. There are two types of these premium tees.
The first is used forย our text-only or "Dated" designs. These are Next Level brand 6210 shirts that are 60% cotton but still provide a lighter, softer feel than the standard shirt. Not all teams have these dated t-shirts available.
The second type ofย premium teeย is used on all of the graphic design tees that have "premium" in the title (other than the "Dated" ones described above) and were introduced to fill a need where our customers had been requesting lighter and softer tees. These are 100% cotton Bella + Canvas 3001 tees that are very popular in apparel shops these days. We've recently added one of these for every graphical design on the site so that every one of our graphic tees has both a standard and premium Bella + Canvas option. Please note that if you don't like light feeling t-shirts, you would probably better enjoy our standard shirts.ย
For more details on the sizing and content of these items, please see ourย size chart page.
Premium vs. Non Premiumย Hoodies/Sweatshirts ย
Our regular orย non-premium hoodiesย are what we originally started the site with. These areย Gildan G18500 hoodies that are a thick, heavy blend hoodies that you probably know well from many other retailers. These are 50% cotton and while durable and comfortable, they are not super soft.ย Theseย hoodies are not labeled as standard or non-premium, but you willย be able to identify them since they will not say 'premium' anywhere in the title.ย They do come in handyย as many of the colors we offer are available in sizes up to 5XL.ย
Our premiumย hoodies were introduced recently toย provide an option for a much softer feeling hoodie. These are 80% cotton and are the real deal. They are our printers' (Spreadshirt) in-house brand of hoodie, made especially to print on their own machines. We highly recommend these hoodies if you're looking for a soft,ย hoodie that you can wear regularly.ย
We do caution that the premium hoodies run small, and would suggest ordering one size larger than you usually would. (i.e. if you usually buy L hoodies, order an XL when purchasing one of our premium hoodies).ย
Every graphic design on our site will have a premium and non-premium hoodie option. To spot the difference, just look for "(Premium)" in the subject line.ย
For more details on the sizing and content of these items, please see ourย size chart page.
The Columbus Checkers were the first professional team in the history of Columbus, Ohio and originally had a true medieval crest for a logo.ย They startedย play in 1966-67 in the IHL at the Ohioย State Fairgrounds Coliseum (still exists today!) and struggled to a last place finish in year one. They wouldย play over .500 hockey in year two with a 32-30-10 record in 72 games and make the playoffs. But that's about the bestย the Checkers would do. They would have a worse record in year three going 26-37-9 (1968-69), losing in the first round for the second straight year. Their fourth season (1969-70) would be even worse, finishing 24-36-12 and out of the playoffs. If you were living in Ohio during these years, you might have been able to watch the Checkers play their local rivals, the Dayton Gems on television...ย
Ad from the Dayton Daily News, February 22, 1970
After they completed the 1969-70 season, the Checkers actually... disappeared. The team had been up for sale throughout most of the season, as the owners had racked up almost $100,000 in debt. In the summer of 1970, it appeared that the ownership group had come to an understanding with another group from Chicago, Independent Investors, Inc, to loan the team money in exchange for an equity stake in the club. But, that deal apparently fell through. And no one knew that had happened until a representative from the Dayton Gems decided to pay a visit to the Columbus offices. Per The Journal Herald (Dayton) on July 8, 1970, "Where are Checkers?"ย
Whatever happened to the Columbus Checkers?
That's the question they're asking around the IHL today in the wake of a disappearing act that may make Houdini look like an amateur...ย
The Checkers' vanishing act was discovered by Dayton Gems GM Lefty McFadden, who stopped at the Columbus' team's office Monday. That is, where it used to be.ย
The office, a mobile unit normally parked on the grounds of the Ohio State Fairgrounds Coliseum, was no where in sight. Neither was any of the team's equipment...
Trying to reach Columbus President and GM Jerry Schmelzerย proved equally frustrating. Schmelzer was reportedly vacationing in Africa...
With just three months until the opening of IHL training camps, league officials don't know whether to plan a schedule for seven or eight teams. The evidence seems to indicate that the Columbus Checkers are dead. But nobody can find the body.ย
๏ปฟBy the end of July 1970, the IHL had assumed control of the franchise and was looking for new owners. Newspaper reports indicated that there were as many as five groups interested in owning the franchise, assuming they could pay the league's demands of a $50,000 entrance fee and $12,500 performance bond. Reportedly, a deal had been close with Charlie Finley, who at the time owned the Oakland A's (moving them from Kansas City in 1968) and the California Golden Seals. But that deal also fell through, and the Checkers were no more by August 1970. Finley would end up getting his hockey team, though. He started the Columbus Seals a year later for the 1971-72 season.ย ย
The Checkers would fold after four years due to poor attendance, but they did make an important contribution by introducing hockey to Columbus, which would become a big league market in 1997 with the creation of the Blue Jackets.
The following photos are courtesy of the Ohio History Connection. You can visit them at OhioMemory.org. These photos are of the Checkers hosting the Toledo Blades at their home arena, the Ohio State Fairgrounds Coliseum, during the 1969-70 season. They really show what the atmosphere of playing in a state fairgrounds was like as well as some 1970s flair. Notice the chain link fence surrounding the ice that would normally be plexiglass today.ย
Are you looking to brush up on the fast paced and exciting game of hockey? Wellย you've come to the right place! The Stroh Brewing Co. from Detroit, MI, has kindly supplied us a copy of their guide for this season that explains the game of hockey. All the trophies, rules, andย regulations of the game are explained very clearly inside. After readying you'll have so much more knowledge of the gameย that you will have to bear the task of explaining offsides to your friends and family. And remember to drink Stroh beer, American's only fire brewed beer! Does brewing beer with fire make sense? No! But they do it anyway!
