New York

Thirty defunct New York hockey teams, from Long Island to Buffalo and the Adirondacks, plus two arenas, on shirts, hoodies, hats, and jerseys you will not find anywhere else.

No state has buried more hockey teams than New York. Madison Square Garden had a farm club skating on Sunday afternoons in the 1930s. Buffalo won Calder Cups for three decades before the Sabres existed. The Eastern League ran through Long Island, Clinton, and Syracuse for twenty years, and the WHA opened its New York franchise in the Garden and closed it in a rink in New Jersey. Every one of these teams is gone now. This is where they live on.

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Adirondack Hockey Club Adirondack IceHawks Albany Choppers Albany River Rats® B.C. Icemen Broome County Blades Broome County Dusters Buffalo Bisons Buffalo Frontiers Buffalo Norsemen™ Buffalo Stampede Buffalo Wings Clinton Comets Commack Roller Rink Empire State Cobras Lake Placid Roamers Long Island Arena Long Island Cougars Long Island Ducks Long Island Jawz Mohawk Valley Comets Mohawk Valley Stars New York Golden Blades New York Raiders New York Rovers Niagara Scenics Plattsburgh Pioneers Sands Point Tigers Syracuse Blazers Syracuse Bulldogs Troy Uncle Sam's Trojans Utica Mohawks

New York hockey history

The city and the Island. Before the Islanders, Long Island's hockey was the Ducks, an Eastern Hockey League club that played at the Long Island Arena in Commack from 1959 to 1973 and built the kind of rowdy, loyal following the EHL was known for. The Long Island Cougars carried on in the North American Hockey League for two seasons after the Ducks folded, and the Long Island Jawz brought roller hockey to the Island for a summer in the 1990s. In Manhattan, the New York Rovers were the Rangers' farm club, skating Sunday afternoons at Madison Square Garden from the 1930s into the early 1950s. The WHA's New York entry lasted a season and a half: the Raiders opened at the Garden in 1972, were renamed the Golden Blades the following fall, collapsed by November 1973, and finished the year across the river as the Jersey Knights.

Buffalo. The Buffalo Bisons were one of the American Hockey League's great franchises, playing thirty seasons at Memorial Auditorium from 1940 to 1970 and winning five Calder Cups, the last of them in their final season, the spring before the Sabres arrived. The Buffalo Norsemen played a single NAHL season in the mid-1970s. Roller Hockey International later put two teams in the Aud, the Buffalo Stampede and the Buffalo Wings, in the mid- and late 1990s.

Upstate. The Eastern League's upstate corridor produced two of the most successful minor league teams anywhere. The Clinton Comets played out of a small arena in Clinton from the mid-1950s through 1973 and dominated the EHL in the late 1960s. The Syracuse Blazers won championships in both the EHL and the North American Hockey League in the early 1970s. Utica, the Mohawk Valley, and Broome County each had teams through the same era, and the Broome Dusters of the NAHL played in Binghamton in the years when that league was the model for a certain movie about minor league hockey. The Adirondack region got the AHL's Red Wings for two decades starting in 1979; the Adirondack IceHawks followed in the United Hockey League, and Glens Falls also hosted the Empire State Cobras of Roller Hockey International.

Albany. The Albany Choppers joined the IHL in 1990 and did not make it to the end of their first season, folding in February 1991. The Albany River Rats did much better, playing seventeen AHL seasons from 1993 to 2010 as a Devils farm club and winning the Calder Cup in 1995 with a team that fed the Devils' Stanley Cup roster that same spring.

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