Indiana Hockey Apparel

Three defunct Indianapolis hockey teams, the Racers, the Checkers, and the Ice, on shirts, hoodies, hats, and jerseys you will not find anywhere else.

Indianapolis is where Wayne Gretzky turned pro. He played eight games for the Racers in the fall of 1978 before the owner sold him to Edmonton to make payroll, and the franchise folded a few weeks later. Thirty years of minor league hockey followed at Market Square Arena and the Fairgrounds Coliseum, including a Turner Cup and a pair of goaltenders named Hasek and Belfour. Every one of these teams is gone now. This is where they live on.

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Indianapolis Checkers Indianapolis Ice Indianapolis Racers

Indiana hockey history

The Racers. The Indianapolis Racers joined the World Hockey Association in 1974 as the first tenant of Market Square Arena, and for four seasons they were a reasonable WHA team in a city that had never had major league hockey. Then Nelson Skalbania bought them. In the summer of 1978 he signed a seventeen-year-old Wayne Gretzky to a personal-services contract, and in November, with the team losing money by the week, he sold Gretzky, Eddie Mio, and Peter Driscoll to the Edmonton Oilers for cash. Gretzky had played eight games in Indianapolis. The Racers folded in December 1978 with the season less than a third over, and a teenage Mark Messier had also passed through on his way to somewhere else.

The Checkers. The Indianapolis Checkers were the New York Islanders' farm club during the Islanders' dynasty years, which meant they were very good: Central Hockey League champions in 1982 and again in 1983, playing at Market Square Arena and then the Fairgrounds Coliseum. When the CHL collapsed in 1984 the Checkers moved to the International Hockey League and played three more seasons before folding in 1987.

The Ice. The Indianapolis Ice were the Chicago Blackhawks' IHL affiliate from 1988, and for a while the Blackhawks sent them everybody: Dominik Hasek and Ed Belfour both played goal in Indianapolis in 1990, the year the Ice won the Turner Cup. The team stayed in the IHL until 1999, dropped to the Central Hockey League when the IHL's finances turned, won the CHL title in 2000, and folded in 2004, which is the last time Indianapolis had a pro team.

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