Indianapolis Ice

International Hockey League (1988-1999)
Central Hockey League (1999-2004)

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Indianapolis has made plenty of runs at pro ice hockey from Capitals to the Racers to the Checkers. But no team had more staying power than the Ice, who played seemingly every coliseum and arena in town between 1988 and 2004. 

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Background

Indianapolis hosted pro hockey in one form or another for 30 years from 1974 until 2004. During those years, Indianapolis clubs have hoisted the championship cup of three different leagues. Future Hall-of-Famers Wayne Gretzky, Dominik Hasek and Mark Messier all skated their early pro games in Indianapolis. But it’s been a bumpy ride also. The Racers infamously folded in the middle of the WHA’s final season in 1978, mere weeks after the debuts of Gretzky and Messier. The Indianapolis Checkers went bust in the mid-80’s and sat dark for an entire winter.

The longest-running of Indy’s pro hockey clubs, the Ice, arrived in 1988. Horn Chen, a Chicago businessman and sports fanastic purchased the carcasss of the Checkers for a reported $200,000 that spring (Indianapolis Star 7/27/2001). The Checkers had sat out the previous International Hockey League season. Chen hired former Indiana Pacers marketing exec Ray Compton to run the team and the new regime selected the Ice as the club’s new identity later that summer.

The Ice were Horn Chen’s first foray into pro sports ownership. Over the next two decades he would embark on a bewildering series of acquisitions across the U.S. and Canada that included multiple minor league baseball and pro hockey teams, a Canadian Football League franchise that he never watched play, a pro Roller Hockey team, and minor league basketball club.

The IHL was formed in 1945. When Chen re-entered Indianapolis into the league in the fall of 1988, it looked much as it always had: an Upper-Midwest-based league that relied on bus travel between long-running clubs in cities like Flint, Fort Wayne, Kalamazoo and Muskegon. But the complexion of the IHL was already in transition. In 1984 the league accepted two refugee franchises from the shuttered Central Hockey League. One was the Indianapolis Checkers, who neatly fit into the IHL’s geographic footprint. The other was the Salt Lake Golden Eagles who certainly did not. The addition of the Utah club turned out to be a foreshadowing of the IHL’s costly future, rather than an one-off event.

Early IHL Years

The Ice got off to a happy start in the IHL. After operating their first year as an independent club, the Ice inked a 5-year deal to become the top farm club of the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks prior to the team’s second season in 1989. It must have been a dream pairing for Horn Chen who was a Blackhawks season ticket holder and owned a group of sports bars in and around Chicago.

In their second seaosn of play, the Ice won IHL’s West Division with a 53-21-0-8 record. The team then roared through the 1990 Turner Cup playoffs, winning 12 of 14 games capped by a four-game sweep of the Muskegon Lumberjacks in the finals.

The following season Czech goaltender Dominik Hasek arrived in Indy courtesy of the Blackhawks partnership. Hasek split time between Chicago and Indy for two seasons, appearing in 53 games for the Ice during the 1990-91 and 1991-92 seasons. Hasek was traded to the Buffalo Sabres in 1992 where he firmly established himself as one of the best netminders of all-time. He earned induction to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2014.

In 1992-93 the Blackhawks assigned 26-year old NHL veteran center Tony Hrkac to the Ice. Hrkac lit up the IHL that winter, leading the circuit in scoring (45 goals, 87 assists) en route to league MVP honors. But Hrkac was discourgaged that his play didn’t earn a call up to the big club and chose to sign the with St. Louis Blues the following summer, bringing his short but remarkable run in Indy to a close.

After the Turner Cup ride of 1990, on-ice success in the IHL proved elusive. The Ice wouldn’t win another playoff series for 9 years.

Financial Struggles

As the 1980’s turned into the 1990’s, the IHL’s ambitions grew. By 1996, the Ice were competing against IHL clubs in Orlando, Phoenix, Quebec City, and San Antonio rather than against Flint, Muskegon and Saginaw. Now the Ice travelled almost everywhere by air. The team’s annual player payroll rose from $240,000 in 1990 to $1.3 million in 1996 (Indianapolis Star 11/30/1997).

The minor league ruffled feathers by expanding into NHL cities like Chicago and Detroit. Also concerning was the desire of some IHL team owners to stock their rosters with aging and high-priced NHL veterans in their late 20’s and 30’s. NHL executives came to view the IHL as less conducive to player development than the more compliant American Hockey League (AHL). NHL clubs increasingly shifted their farms clubs out of the IHL and into the AHL, leaving IHL owners to meet the burden of their increased payrolls and expenses with no outside support.

After the Ice’s original five-year affiliation with the Chicago Blackhawks ended in 1994, the Blackhawks agreed to renew only on a year-to-year basis. The Indianapolis Star (11/30/1997), paraphrasing Ice President Ray Compton, suggested the affiliation often felt more like “hour-to-hour”. Horn Chen lost a reported $3 million during the Ice’s final four season in the IHL from 1995 to 1999 (Indianapolis Star 7/27/2001) .

Final Years

In 1999, Chen withdrew the Ice from the IHL and entered the team into the cheaper, lower-level Central Hockey League. He also sold the club to a local group led by auto dealer Gary Pedigo that same year. The Blackhawks affiliation came to an end with the move, as no CHL clubs had NHL tie-ups at the time.

The Ice lasted five years in the CHL, splitting their time in this era between their on again off again home at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and the sparkling new Conseco Fieldhouse. The Ice used Conseco for selected big promotions like the team’s annual Pack The House charity benefits and a November 2002 publicity stunt that saw the team sign 7′ 7″ former NBA center Manute Bol to a one-game contract.

Horn Chen re-acquired the Ic from its local owners in 2001 and ran it for three more seasons.

In the spring of 2004 the pro version of the Ice folded after 16 seasons. Chen sold the Ice name and marks to a former Indianapolis Checkers player named Paul Skjodt who married into the billionaire Simon family, owners of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers. Skjodt created a new amateur team called the Indiana Ice that competed in the United States Hockey League from 2004 until 2014.

Pro hockey returned in 2014 with the arrival of the Indy Fuel of the ECHL.

Indianapolis Ice Shop

Indianapolis Ice Video

Ice host the Houston Aeros at Market Square Arena. October 18, 1995.

In Memoriam

Ice owner Horn Chen passed away on December 7, 2015 at age 83.

Downloads

11-28-1990 Ice vs. Fort Wayne Komets Game Notes

4-6-1991 Ice vs. Phoenix Roadrunners Game Notes

10-5-1991 Ice vs. Muskegon Lumberjacks Game Notes

11-16-1991 Ice vs. Milwaukee Admirals Game Notes

2-8-1992 Ice vs. San Diego Gulls Game Notes

2-27-1994 Ice vs. Fort Wayne Komets Game Notes

Links

“Throwback Thursday: Manute Bol on Ice“, Tal Pinchevsky, Vice.com, November 19, 2015

International Hockey League Media Guides

International Hockey League Programs

Central Hockey League Media Guides

Central Hockey League Programs 1992-2014

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