Virginia Hockey Apparel

Eight defunct Virginia hockey teams from Richmond, Hampton Roads, and the Roanoke Valley, on shirts, hoodies, hats, and jerseys you will not find anywhere else.

Virginia was the southern edge of the hockey map for thirty years. Richmond and Norfolk each had the AHL in the early 1970s, Hampton had it briefly and lost it midseason, and the Roanoke Valley was Eastern League country from the late 1960s through the Lancers' back-to-back titles in the 1980s. Every one of these teams is gone now. This is where they live on.

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Hampton Aces Hampton Gulls Richmond Robins Richmond Wildcats Salem / Roanoke Valley (EHL) Tidewater Sharks Tidewater Wings Virginia Lancers

Virginia hockey history

Richmond. The Richmond Robins were the Philadelphia Flyers' AHL farm club from 1971 to 1976, the first tenant of the new Richmond Coliseum, and the highest level of hockey the city has ever had. When the Flyers moved their affiliate to Maine, Richmond dropped down to the Eastern Hockey League, where the Richmond Wildcats played a single season at the end of the 1970s before the name changed again.

Hampton Roads. Norfolk got the AHL the same year Richmond did. The Tidewater Wings opened the Norfolk Scope in 1971 as the Detroit Red Wings' affiliate and were renamed the Virginia Wings a year later; they lasted through 1975. The Tidewater Sharks followed in the Southern Hockey League. Across the water, the Hampton Gulls were the best of the SHL teams, playing at the Hampton Coliseum from 1973, and when the SHL collapsed in 1977 the Gulls were admitted to the AHL, only to fold partway through their first season there. The Hampton Aces were the city's Eastern League team at the turn of the 1980s.

The Roanoke Valley. The Salem Civic Center opened in 1967 with an Eastern Hockey League team, the Salem Rebels, who became the Roanoke Valley Rebels in 1971 and carried on into the Southern Hockey League after the EHL split. A decade later the Virginia Lancers took up residence at the LancerLot in Vinton, a rink built for them, and won the Atlantic Coast Hockey League championship in 1985 and again in 1986, the best two-year run any Virginia team has had.

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