United Hockey League (1997-1999)
Tombstone
Born: June 1997 – The Utica Blizzard relocate to Winston-Salem, NC
Moved: June 14, 1999 (Adirondack IceHawks)
First Game: October 17, 1997 (L 8-1 @ Madison Monsters)
Last Game: April 9, 1999 (L 7-3 vs. Muskegon Fury)
Colonial Cup Championships: None
Arena
Branding
Team Colors:
Ownership
Owner: Art Shaver
Background
The IceHawks were part of a procession of short-lived minor league hockey clubs that cycled through Winston-Salem, North Carolina during the 1990’s and early 2000’s. The IceHawks followed the Thunderbirds (1989-1992) and Mammoths (1995-1996) and preceded the T-Birds (2003-2004), Polar Twins (2004-2005) and Cyclones (2007-2009).
Winston-Salem was an odd fit for the United Hockey League when owner Art Shaver established the team during the summer of 1997. The UHL’s other nine franchises were clustered in the upper midwest, Ontario and upstate New York. The IceHawks’ nearest rival during the 1997-98 season was in Binghamton, New York, as 12-hour bus trip from North Carolina. During the IceHawks’ second and final season, they gained an in-state rival in North Carolina, with the arrival of the Asheville Smoke.
The IceHawks posted two losings seasons at Wake Forest’s Lawrence Joel Memorial Coliseum and then returned from whence they came two years earlier – upstate New York – in June 1999.
No IceHawks players advanced on to the National Hockey League. A couple arrived with NHL cred though. Keith Osborne (Icehawks ’97-’98) appeared in 16 NHL games with the St. Louis Blues and Tampa Bay Lightning in the early 1990’s. Bob Halkidis, who suited up just three times during the IceHawks’s first season, was a veteran of 256 NHL games between 1985 and 1996.
After moving to Glens Falls, New York in 1999, the former W-S IceHawks club carried on for seven more seasons before going out of business in the spring of 2006.
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