Louisville Panthers Hockey Apparel & Drinkware
Order vintage Louisville Panthers tees, long sleeves, hoodies, crewnecks, mugs and more. The third pro team to call the Derby City home in the 1990s, the Panthers played at Freedom Hall from 1999 to 2001 and saw Dan Boyle and a young Roberto Luongo come through their ranks. Celebrate Louisville hockey by browsing all of our Panthers gear, then read the team history below. Every design comes from an American small business devoted to preserving the history of fondly remembered and long-lost hockey teams.
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Louisville Panthers History
The Louisville Panthers were the third different pro hockey team to call the Derby City home during the 1990s. Following in the footsteps of the Icehawks and RiverFrogs, the Panthers started play at Freedom Hall for the 1999-00 season. The Panthers aimed bigger than both the โHawks and the โFrogs though as they played at a much larger venue in Freedom Hall โ the other teams played at Broadbent Arena that had about half the capacity of Freedom Hall โ and the Panthers were a step up in competition as they played in the AHL while the other two played in the ECHL. With the Kentucky Thoroughblades in Lexington also in the AHL at this time, the state of Kentucky had two Triple-A hockey teams in 1999!ย
The Panthers had two solid seasons on the ice in Louisville and saw some future stars come through their ranks. In their first season, 1999-00, they went 42-30-7-1 and were led by Eric Bogunecki and Dan Boyle. In a very crowded Mid-Atlantic Division they finished fourth but were only five points off of the first place Thoroughblades. In Kentuckyโs first and only intra-state playoff, the Thoroughblades and Panthers faced off in the first round of the 2000 playoffs, with the Thoroughblades taking the series 3-1.ย
Louisvilleโs second season was quite as exciting as the team regressed and went only 21-51-5-3. One note is that they did get three appearances from future Hall of Famer, Roberto Luongo. The Panthers attendances were unfortunately not great for an AHL team in a 17,000 seat area at around 5,000 fans per game. After only two seasons, management pulled the plug and moved the team to Iowa.
