Kentucky Hockey Apparel

Six defunct Kentucky hockey teams from Louisville and Lexington, on shirts, hoodies, hats, and jerseys you will not find anywhere else.

For about a decade, Kentucky had more hockey than it knew what to do with. Louisville ran three different franchises through Freedom Hall and Broadbent Arena, and Lexington put an AHL team in Rupp Arena and drew crowds that surprised the league. Then it stopped, almost all at once, and by 2003 the Commonwealth was out of the pro game. Every one of these teams is gone now. This is where they live on.

Skip to the history

Kentucky Thoroughblades® Lexington Men O' War Louisville Blades Louisville IceHawks Louisville Panthers Louisville RiverFrogs

Kentucky hockey history

Louisville. The city's first pro team was the Louisville Blades, a member of the International Hockey League in its earliest years, right after the Second World War, when the league was still a handful of clubs around Detroit and Windsor. It was forty years before pro hockey came back. The Louisville IceHawks arrived in 1990 as an expansion team and played four seasons at Broadbent Arena on the state fairgrounds. The Louisville RiverFrogs, whose logo may be the best thing to come out of Kentucky hockey, took over the same building in 1995, played three seasons, and left for Miami. The Louisville Panthers were the city's one shot at the top minor league: the Florida Panthers' AHL affiliate for two seasons, 1999 to 2001, at Freedom Hall. When Florida moved its farm club after the second year, the Panthers folded, and Louisville has not had a pro team since.

Lexington. The Kentucky Thoroughblades were the AHL's first team in the state, the San Jose Sharks' affiliate at Rupp Arena from 1996 to 2001. Rupp is a basketball building with 23,000 seats, and the Thoroughblades filled enough of them in the early seasons to lead the league in attendance. Evgeni Nabokov and Miikka Kiprusoff both played goal for them on the way to the NHL. After five seasons the franchise was moved to Cleveland, and Rupp got one more try with the Lexington Men O' War, a minor league team that lasted a single season in 2002–03. Both Lexington names came from the horse business, which is how you know they were trying.

Looking for something else? Browse every team A to Z or shop by state.