Michigan Hockey Apparel

Nineteen defunct Michigan hockey teams, from the Copper Country to Detroit, on shirts, hoodies, hats, and jerseys you will not find anywhere else.

Professional hockey was invented in Michigan. The first openly paid team in the world skated in Houghton in 1903, and the first pro league followed a year later with Calumet in it. Sixty years on, the International Hockey League made Flint, Saginaw, Port Huron, and Muskegon the working heart of minor league hockey, with rivalries that outlived the league itself. Every one of these teams is gone now. This is where they live on.

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Michigan hockey history

The Copper Country, where pro hockey began. In the winter of 1903–04 a dentist named Jack "Doc" Gibson organized the Portage Lakes Hockey Club in Houghton and paid its players openly, which no team had done before. The next season he helped found the International Hockey League, the first professional league in the sport, with Portage Lakes, the Calumet Miners, and teams in Sault Ste. Marie and Pittsburgh. The league lasted three seasons before the Canadian amateur bodies gave in and allowed pros, and the talent went home. For those three winters, the Keweenaw Peninsula was the center of the hockey world.

The IHL era. A different International Hockey League, the bus-league IHL of 1945 to 2001, was a Michigan institution for its first four decades. The Port Huron Flags joined in 1962 and won three Turner Cups over the next twenty seasons. Muskegon's franchise ran under three names, the Zephyrs from 1960, the Mohawks from 1965, and later the Lumberjacks, before leaving in 1992. The Flint Generals arrived in 1969, gave way to the Flint Spirits in 1985, and the Generals name came back in the 1990s in the United Hockey League. The Saginaw Gears played eleven seasons from 1972 and won two Turner Cups, and the Grand Rapids Owls had a three-year run in the late 1970s. When the IHL grew into a big-city league in the 1990s, most of these towns moved down to the Colonial and United leagues, which is where the Flint Bulldogs, Muskegon Fury, and Port Huron Border Cats played out their years.

Detroit. The Michigan Stags were the WHA's attempt at Detroit, playing the 1974–75 season at Cobo Arena and folding before it ended; the franchise finished the schedule as the Baltimore Blades. Thirty years later the Motor City Mechanics played two UHL seasons in Fraser, and the Motor City Mustangs were Roller Hockey International's Detroit entry for the 1994 summer.

Marquette. The Marquette Iron Rangers were a senior-league power in the Upper Peninsula through the 1960s and 1970s, and the Marquette Pirates carried the city's colors later on. The Iron Rangers' story is told at length on our blog.

Nineteen teams, and the place where somebody first got paid to play.

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