East Coast Hockey League (1989-1996)
Tombstone
Born: 1989 – ECHL expansion franchise
Move Announced: March 15, 1996 (Pensacola Ice Pilots)1Huggins, Harold. GANNETT NEWS SERVICE. “Knights fans angry team leaving Nashville”. The News Journal (Pensacola, FL). March 16, 1996
First Game: October 27, 1989 (W 4-3 @ Knoxville Cherokees)
Last Game: April 4, 1996 (L 3-2 vs. Knoxville Cherokees)
Riley Cup Championships: None
Arena
Nashville Municipal Auditorium (7,908)
Opened: 1962
Marketing
Team Colors:
- 1991-92: Orange, Blue & White
- 1995-96: Blue, Black, Yellow & Gray
Ownership
Owners:
- 1989-1991: Ron Fuller & Bob Polk
- 1991-1994: Godfrey Wood, et al.
- 1994-1996: David Berkman, Richard Adler & Charles Felix
Background
The Knights were Nashville’s minor league hockey team for seven winters from 1989 to 1996. The Knights were members of the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL), a circuit generally considered two rungs below the NHL.
Team co-founder Ron Fuller, a 6′ 9″ 275-pound former pro wrestler known in the ring as The Tennessee Stud, and his partner Bob Polk bought their ECHL expansion franchise for $25,000 in 1989. The Knights debuted that October and were a box office hit at Municipal Auditorium. The Knights drew over 6,000 fans 10 times during their debut season, including a then ECHL record of 8,805 on February 2, 1990.
Fuller and Polk sold out after two seasons and attendance declined by the mid-1990’s. In 1994 the owners of the International Hockey League’s Atlanta Knights purchased the team. The IHL was a step higher on hockey’s developmental ladder. Nashville became a farm club of the Atlanta Knights for the next two seasons and also adopted the logo and Blue/Black/Yellow/Gray colors of the Atlanta club.
Crowds bottomed out during the 1995-96 season at 3,109 per game, a drop of nearly 40% from just three years earlier. Two weeks before the 1995-96 season ended, the Knights owners announced they would move to Pensacola, Florida for the 1996-97 season.
The Knights featured two prominent players during their final season in Nashville. 38-year old right wing Lou Franceschetti played parts of 11 seasons in the NHL and scored 21 goals for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1989-90. He skated the final 18 games of his pro career with Nashville that winter.
Headed the other direction was rookie center Glen Metropolit who potted 30 goals in 58 games for Nashville in 1995-96. Metropolit went on to play 8 years in the NHL and finally retired as the last active former Knight in 2017 following a final season in Austria.
Trivia
Canadian center Trevor Jobe (Knights ’90-95) was the Knights’ all-time leading scorer and a model of consistency with 168 goals and 168 assists in 166 games.
Nashville Knights Video
Team founder Ron Fuller looks back on the early days of the Knights in this 2019 interview.
Links
East Coast Hockey League Programs
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2 Responses
“Two seasons before the 1995-96 season ended, the Knights owners announced they would move to Pensacola, Florida for the 1996-97 season.”. I don’t think this is right. I was there the final season as part of the office staff. Everyone was blindsided by the move, which wasn’t shared with the office staff until right after the final game of the season.
Hi John,
Thanks for commenting. You did catch a big typo there: the article should have said “Two WEEKS before…” and now “Two SEASONS before…”. I fixed that.
I went back in Newspapers.com to double-check the timeline and there were prominent articles in the press (Pensacola News Journal – see footnote/citation in the Tombstone tab at top of article) in other ECHL cities on March 15th that the Knights were out of Nashville. The final regular season game came eight days later. And then the Knights played the Knoxville Cherokees in the first round of the playoffs and were eliminated on April 4th.
Thanks again for helping us improve the site!
Drew