Minnesota Hockey Apparel

Ten defunct Minnesota hockey teams, from the Iron Range to the Twin Cities to Warroad, on shirts, hoodies, hats, and jerseys you will not find anywhere else.

The State of Hockey has buried more teams than most states have ever had. Minneapolis and Duluth were playing pro hockey in the 1920s, St. Paul had the WHA, and a town of 1,700 people on the Canadian border won three straight national senior championships in the 1990s. Every one of these teams is gone now. This is where they live on.

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Duluth Hornets Kelly Lake Lakers Minneapolis Mighty Millers Minnesota Arctic Blast Minnesota Blue Ox Minnesota Fighting Saints Saint Paul Rangers Saint Paul / Twin Cities Vulcans Taconite Hornets Warroad Lakers

Minnesota hockey history

The early pro years. Minnesota had professional hockey before the NHL had an American team. The Minneapolis Millers and the Duluth Hornets were both members of the American Hockey Association in the late 1920s, a league that ran a level below the NHL through the Depression years, and the Millers name carried on into the United States Hockey League after the war, where in 1945–46 the Millers shared a schedule with an Omaha Knights rookie named Gordie Howe. The Duluth franchise left for Wichita in the early 1930s.

St. Paul. The Saint Paul Rangers were the New York Rangers' Central Hockey League farm club in the mid-1960s, playing at the old St. Paul Auditorium. A decade later the city got a major league team. The Minnesota Fighting Saints joined the World Hockey Association in 1972, opened the new St. Paul Civic Center a few months into their first season, and became one of the league's better-drawing clubs before running out of money and folding in February 1976. A second Fighting Saints franchise, the relocated Cleveland Crusaders, tried again that fall and lasted until January. The Saint Paul Vulcans, later the Twin Cities Vulcans, were the metro's junior team in the United States Hockey League for nearly three decades.

Roller hockey at the Target Center. Roller Hockey International put two teams in Minneapolis in consecutive summers: the Minnesota Arctic Blast in 1994 and the Minnesota Blue Ox in 1995, both playing at the Target Center. Neither made it to a third season.

Warroad and the Iron Range. Warroad is a town of under two thousand people on the Manitoba border that calls itself Hockeytown USA and has the Olympic medals to back it up. Its senior team, the Warroad Lakers, won the Allan Cup, the Canadian senior championship, three years running from 1994 to 1996, the only American club ever to do it. The Kelly Lake Lakers and Taconite Hornets are Iron Range names from the era when every mining location north of Hibbing fielded a team of its own.

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