International Hockey League (1948-1949)
Tombstone
Born: 1948
Folded: Postseason 1949
First Game:
Last Game:
Turner Cup Championships: None
Arena
Branding
Team Colors:
Ownership
Owner: Muncie Winter Sports, Inc. (William Warfel, et al.)
Background
The Muncie Flyers hockey team were a One-Year Wonder in the International Hockey League during the winter of 1948-49. The team played against IHL competition from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada.
Player-coach Henry Coupe’s squad finished fourth place out of 5 teams in the IHL’s Southern Division with a record 9-19-4. Toledo Mercurys South swept the Flyers out of the Turner Cup playoff quarterfinals to end Muncie’s only season in the IHL. Walter Melnyk was Muncie’s leading scorer with 12 goals and 14 assists. No players on the 1948-49 Muncie Flyers ever went on to play in the NHL according to Hockeydb.com.
The Flyers played at Gibson Ice Arena on South Mock Avenue. Due to late rent payments by the Flyers local ownership syndicate, Arena owners Earl & Glenn Gibson and their father Alonzo padlocked the doors to the arena during the first week of February 1949. The Gibsons soon relented and re-opened the arena to the team. But the corporation that backed the team dissolved soon afterwards. The team finished out the final month of the season under the control of the players themselves, with their wives handling ticket sales.
The Flyers managed to finish out the 1948-49 schedule but did not return for a second season.
Gibson Arena still operates as a roller skating rink in its original location on South Mock Avenue today. After the Flyers folded the Gibson family removed the ice plant and converted the building solely to roller skating in 1949.
Trivia
Muncie previously had a pro football team called the Flyers that played briefly in the American Professional Football Association, an antecedent of today’s NFL, in 1920 and 1921.
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