Australia's Playoffs Are Set

With the regular season coming to a close in the "land down under", six teams would know who was playing whom next week in the AIHL Playoffs. They're competing for the trophy to the left - the Goodall Cup - which was most recently won in 2025 by the Melbourne Ice. There were interesting games played this weekend with playoff spots on the line, and the defending champions were one of those teams. With every team approaching its 30th game of the season, let's take a look at who qualified to play next week, which teams earned byes to the semifinal, and which teams are the likely favorite to play in the one-game, winner-takes-all final on August 30 at O'Brien Icehouse!

Newcastle Northstars

We'll start with the Northstars who have seemingly been at the top of the AIHL standings all season long. The Northstars needed a win to guarantee themselves a top-two finish, and two wins would lock up the top spot in the AIHL. They were facing the eight-place Central Coast Rhinos and the seventh-place Sydney Bears who were fighting for their playoff lives. Would they earn the top seeding?

The Rhinos weren't about to roll over and allow Newcastle to have three points for free as the teams were tied at 0-0 through 20 minutes of play. Two quick goals by the Rhinos before the second period was five minutes old put the Northstars back on their heels a bit, but they'd get one of those back 56 seconds after the Rhinos' second goal. The second period would end in that 2-1 score with Central Coast needing just 20 more minutes for a big win.

Good teams find a way to win, though, and the Northstars would draw even when Evgenii Skachkov scored his 40th goal of the season midway through the third period, and Aziz Baazzi pushed Newcastle ahead by a 3-2 score with his goal with just over five minutes remaining. The Rhinos simply couldn't find an answer to that goal as Newcastle took the 3-2 game and moved closer to securing first-overall in the standings. Big shout-out to Rhinos goaltender Anand Oberoi who made 55 stops in the loss and deserved better.

Sunday's game against the Bears was made a little easier based on other scores on Saturday, and the Northstars needed just a win in regulation or in extra time to secure top spot. Despite the Bears jumping out to a 3-0 lead through 20 minutes, the Northstars found the back of the net in the second period, but still trailed 5-3 when the horn sounded. Just as they did one before, though, they crushed dreams with a five-goal third period to capture the AIHL's top spot with an 8-5 win over the Sydney Bears for their 21st win.

Canberra Brave

The Brave had a shot at wrapping up first-place with wins and a little help, but we know the Northstars already had secured a share of first-place by Saturday evening. The Brave also needed to win to hold off the Melbourne Mustangs who had one remaining game, and that was against this Brave team. Canberra controlled their own destiny in this weekend's games, so could they capture a bye to the semifinal?

Canberra had the pleasure of dealing with the sixth-place Melbourne Ice on Saturday, and the Ice were battling for their own playoff lives as they held the final playoff spot. After a first period that saw Melbourne take a 2-1 lead followed by a scoreless second period, the Brave fell behind 3-1 before scoring twice in the final 35 seconds of the game to push this game to overtime at a 3-3 score! Dominic Canic and Justin Maylan were the heroes there, but this game wasn't done.

Overtime solved nothing, so a shootout was needed to find a winner. Ice netminder Tatsunoshin Ishida stopped both of the Brave's first two shooters while David Booth scored for the Ice. Melbourne's Kolton Shindle would end this game as the third Ice shooter when he beat Joel Hasselman, giving the Ice a 4-3 shootout win over the Brave! The shootout loss pushed the Brave ahead of the Melbourne Mustangs by one point, but Sunday's game now loomed large when it came to determining second-place in the AIHL! See below for Sunday's game!

Melbourne Mustangs

Melbourne already knew that they could not catch the Northstars following Newcastle's win on Saturday, so second-place was the goal for the Mustangs. With the Brave ahead by one point, the Mustangs were in must-win mode as a regulation or extra-time win would push them past the Brave and into second-place. The Brave, for their part, also had to win as a loss would allow Melbourne to leap past them, but an extra-time loss would see Melbourne move into second-place by virtue of total wins. There was high-stakes hockey drama on Sunday afternoon at the O'Brien Icehouse in Victoria, Australia!

The Brave found themselves reeling after another slow start as they trailed by a 3-0 score at the end of 20 minutes, but they'd score three goals of their own to put the Mustangs on their heels at the end of the second period. After Spencer Cox put the Brave up 4-3 just 53 seconds into the final frame, the two teams would battle for the next 18 minutes until Cox was sent to the sin bin for holding. On the power-play, Mustangs defender Brody Crane fired a wrist shot that got past Joel Hasselman and dented twine with 30.6 seconds remaining, and this game was tied at 4-4 and heading to extra time!


In overtime, the Brave were cursed by another penalty as Casey Kubara was sent off for tripping with 92 seconds remaining in the game. Knowing they had to win to secure second-place, the Mustangs threw caution to the wind and brought goaltender Noah Giesbrecht for a fifth attacker. Would this gamble pay off for the Mustangs?
Defender Philippe Caron send the Melbourne crowd home happy as he tees up his twelfth goal of the season to give the Mustangs the 5-4 victory over the Brave and, more importantly, moves the Mustangs into second-place in the AIHL standings! What a comeback!

Perth Thunder

The Thunder knew they would either be in fourth-, fifth-, or sixth-place as the season wound down thanks to the gap that opened up in the standings between the top-three teams and themselves. Thanks to a few key wins down the stretch, Perth only needed one win this weekend to lock up fourth-place. With a pair of games against the last-place Adelaide Adrenaline, Perth knew what it had to do.

Perth grabbed a 1-0 lead through the first period on Saturday before the teams traded goals in the second period. The Thunder would score two shorthanded goals and a power-play goal in the third period, however, to salt this game away as the 5-1 victory moved them to 48 points where none of the Sydney Ice Dogs, the Sydney Bears, nor the Melbourne Ice could catch them in the standings.

That made Sunday's game against the Adrenaline all for naught, but the youngsters who make up Adelaide's roster showed up to close out their season with a win! The Adrenaline built a 2-0 lead through 20 minutes and a 5-0 lead through 40 minutes en route to a 5-1 victory for their third win of the season and something to build on for the 2027 season! Perth, however, will be the fourth-seeded team.

Sydney Ice Dogs

The Sydney Ice Dogs controlled their own destiny going into the final weekend of play. They wanted to win both, of course, to give them the best chance of making the playoffs, but they could also use help when it came to the Sydney Bears and the Melbourne Ice. The Ice and Bears, thanks to scheduling, had just one game remaining on their calendar, so the Ice Dogs had the advantage here. All they had to do was get ahead of Melbourne, and they'd bump the defending champions out of the playoff picture! Could they actually do that? Two games against the ninth-place Brisbane Lightning certainly helps!

Rarely do I get to say that these two teams combined for 36 goals this weekend, but things went a little crazy in Brisbane between the Ice Dogs and Lightning. Saturday night saw Sydney establish a 5-2 lead in the first period, and it's a lead they would not relinquish despite Brisbane;'s best efforts in a 13-10 victory! That win put them a point back of the Ice after Melbourne's shootout win, so there was more work to do on Sunday if the Ice Dogs wanted in on the playoffs.

If you thought that the coaches may have had a chat with their players about playing defence, think again. The Lightning built a 4-1 lead through 23 minutes of play, but the Ice Dogs knew the stakes of this game. They rattled off seven goals in just over 27 minutes of play while only surrendering one more, and the Ice Dogs defeated the Brisbane Lightning by an 8-5 score to leapfrog the idle Melbourne Ice into a playoff spot! Other games still needed to be completed to know where the Ice Dogs would ultimately finish, but Sydney punched their ticket to the playoffs with this win over Brisbane!

Sydney Bears

The Sydney Bears were scoreboard watching when it came to the Ice and Ice Dogs. Their last game was on Sunday against the Northstars, so they were hoping that Brisbane could do them a favour and keep the Ice Dogs from climbing the standings. What made Sunday's game weird is that the Bears knew what their status would be after Melbourne's game on Saturday, and because they actually had a 0.5-point lead over the Ice in the standings thanks to a weird decision made by the AIHL. In short, the Bears were already in the playoffs thanks to that half-point regardless of what the Ice did on Saturday.

As we saw above, the Northstars ended the Bears' season on a losing note by an 8-5 setback, but that loss was also more costly than just a loss in the standings. The loss allowed the Ice Dogs to jump the Bears in the standings as well, leaving the Ice Dogs in fifth-place and the Bears in sixth-place. The defending champions in the Melbourne Ice were officially eliminated by the Ice Dogs' win on Sunday.

The Playoff Picture

With the six teams officially known for the playoffs, the AIHL released the following graphic for fans to follow over the next two weekends.

The Perth Thunder and the Sydney Ice Dogs will meet next Friday with the winner moving on to play the Newcastle Northstars on Saturday while the Canberra Brave and Sydney Bears will meet on Friday with the winner of that game earning the right to play the Melbourne Mustangs on Saturday. Obviously, the winners of the semifinal games will meet in the final on Sunday, August 30 at 2pm Australian time, and that game will be broadcast on ESPN!

There's no doubt that playoff hockey is the best hockey, but, when playoff lives are on the line, heroes emerge and bold teams prevail. We saw the Mustangs and the Ice Dogs win their way into better playoff seedings, and now we'll see which of the six remaining AIHL teams can win their way to championship glory on August 30! Three-straight wins is all that stands between one team and a celebration!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Back To Their Roots

The Atlanta Gladiators have an interesting history when one considers that they became Atlanta's ECHL team in 2015. Previously named for the northeast county that reaches into Atlanta, the Gwinnett Gladiators were the original Mobile Mysticks franchise that played in Alabama from 1995 until 2003. The move to Gwinett County saw them go on a solid playoff run each season with no less than 40 wins in any of their first five seasons, but it's been a long, long time since Atlanta saw any hockey success since those early days of Gladiators hockey.

Since adopting Atlanta's name, the Gladiators have made the playoffs three times in nine seasons and have never advanced pas the first round. Twice in those three seasons have the Gadiators reached the 43-win mark, but it hasn't translated to postseason success. The last time that the Gladiators won a playoff series was back in 2013 under head coach John Wroblewski when they fell in the second round.

It should be noted that the team switched their colours from garnet and black to navy blue and gold as shown above to "create a unique identity and attract fans throughout the highly diverse landscape in metro Atlanta." There was hope from Atlanta fans that an affiliation with the Nashville Predators organization would soon follow based on these changes, but that affiliation wouldn't happen until 2023. The Gladiators instead remained as the Boston Bruins' ECHL affiliate.

Of course, that brings us to Friday where the Gladiators unveiled this.

The Gladiators will return to their original garnet-and-black scheme that they used when they moved to Gwinnett County! These new jerseys will be worn in the 2026-27 season, and they look pretty good! I'm not sure about that script on the left with the stripe so low, but the colours look fine on these new Gladiators threads!

These jerseys aren't replications of the original jerseys worn in 2003 when the team arrived from Mobile, and I'm glad they didn't bring back the diagonal-name jersey worn in 2012-13. The white jersey could use a maroon shoulder yoke with a black outline as an improvement, but, overall, these jerseys and colours work nicely.

With the Fort Wayne Komets throwing back to a number of eras in their history this season and, now, with Atlanta going back to their original colour scheme, it looks like two ECHL franchises see the value in embracing their roots. That's the thing about bringing back old jerseys: perople identify with them and have memories from the eras in which they were worn while teams can tell those stories again. It never hurts to turn back the clock when doing a rebranding!

If you want to read more about the Gladiators' history, please visit the Georgia Hockey Museum's website where they have an incredible article all about the Gladiators' history among the 15 teams featured! Huge shout-out to Jay Jarvis for putting this site together!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

The Least Amount Of Risk

The New York Islanders have an interesting franchise history, but their fans have always been partial to the original logo which the team wore in establishing its dynasty from 1979-1983. We know they rallied hard against the Fisherman logo in the 1990s before it was replaced with the original logo, and we've seen other logos land with thuds as Islanders fans made it clear as to which logo they prefer. When the third jersey contest was announced for the 2027-28 season, every option was back in play for fans to choose, and the hope was that the Islanders would see an awesome winner.

The results of the eight-jersey, bracket-style voting ended today, and the Islanders now have themselves a winner for that third jersey.

I'm not unhappy with how the vote ended, but this was literally the best of the eight options and even it's not great. This jersey is the safest option of the eight presented when it comes to the design, and the lighthouse logo has been in demand for a third jersey for quite some time by Islanders fans. The New York Islanders took zero risks.

Am I against this jersey? Not at all. That lighthouse logo is a great logo, and it should look good on the chests of players as a fully-embroidered mark for the New York Islanders. It's infintely better than the "NY" logo, and it certainly has as much charm and fun as the Fisherman. Everyone thinks of islands when one sees a lighthouse.

As you can see on Zigmund Palffy, this lighthouse logo was the shoulder patch on the original Fisherman jerseys, and it has always stood out as one of the better secondary logos, in my opinion, in NHL history. It's colourful, it catches the eye, and it needed to be used again by the Islanders. Whether it works as a long-term primary logo will be a question answwered in 2027-28 when they don these new third jerseys, but it certainly has a shot at warming fans' hearts.

Perhaps this was the jersey that the Islanders needed, though, after taking a big swing with the Fisherman in the 1990s. As was written by Nicholas Hirshon in We Want Fish Sticks, "the logo quickly became a scapegoat for the Islanders' poor play," so the Islanders are going to want to win in the Lighthouse jersey. Otherwise, this new third jersey could establish its own legacy of poor results which the Islanders don't want. Nothing hurts sales more than having a losing team.

I look at the uniqueness of this jersey compared to others in my collection, and there simply isn't enough for me to consider it as one that needs to be added. It's certainly not the Fisherman, it doesn't have that cool factor like the Oilers' alternate jersey did, it doesn't have that eye-catching quality that the Pooh Bear did, and it's not quite as bizarre as the Stars' alternate jersey was. It's solid, but it's going to take something special for the Islanders to see this jersey celebrated as much as their traditional home and road jerseys are.

The popular saying of "no risk, no reward" means that one has to step out of one's comfort zone if one wants to be successful. The Islanders didn't do that here as they stayed safe with colour, stripes, and logos. Yes, they can still make changes to these jerseys before they debut in 2027, but the Lighthouse jerseys feel safe which fits the overall brand of the New York Islanders. Former GM and noted alternate jersey hater Lou Lamoriello would be proud of the effort here.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

The Hockey Show - Episode 726

The Hockey Show, Canada's only campus-produced radio show that strictly talks hockey, is back in the confines of the UMFM studios for another show this evening, but we won't be joined by Montreal Victoire defender Kati Tabin as she's far too busy to make an appearance. If you're attending her camp, have a great time, but we'll focus on some bigger stories tonight as the world of hockey has some good, some not-so-good, and some absolute treachery happening in it over the last week. There's a pile of stuff to chat about this evening, so settle in for another examination of the game and all its connections on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT!

They won't be looking for a dolphin like the pet detective shown, but Teebz and Jason will look at the newest gambling-trend-turned-investment-tool with which the financial world is hoping to capitalize. Beyond that madness, they'll discuss Rogers canning the HNiC Punjabi broadcasts, the OHL cracking down on fighting again, Jeff Skinner's new home, Fort Wayne's incredible jerseys, a pro ball player, championships in three leagues, there's finally a name and logo for one team, and whatever else comes across the desk at our hosts. There's lots to discuss tonight on the show, so settle in for an hour of hockey opinions and thoughts on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT on one of 101.5 FM, Channel 718 on MTS TV, or via UMFM.com!

If you live outside Winnipeg and want to listen, we have options! The UMFM website's streaming player works well if you want to listen online. We also recommend Radio Garden if you need an easy-to-use online stream. If you're more of an app person, we recommend you use the TuneIn app found on the App Store or Google Play Store.

If you have questions, you can email all show queries and comments to hockeyshow@umfm.com! Tweet me anytime with questions you may have by hitting me up at @TeebzHBIC on Twitter! I'm here to listen to you, so make your voice heard! And because both Teebz and Jason are on the butterfly app where things are less noisy, you can find Teebz here and Jason here on Bluesky!

Tonight, Teebz and Jason chat high-stakes gambling, stupid decisions, expensive fights, Swiss chalets, historical accuracy, pro hits, winning teams, new names, and much more exclusively on 101.5 UMFM and on the UMFM.com web stream!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

We're Gonna Need A Discount Rack

As a guy who has a fairly robust hockey jersey collection, I can tell you that there are many jerseys I never would have in my collection simply because they don't have that certain quality that makes people love them or hate them. For example, the Justin Bieber-designed Toronto Maple Leafs jersey would not be in my collection because it's literally forgettable. Compared to jerseys like the Islanders' Fisherman and the Oilers' Todd McFarlane alternates, the Bieber jerseys simply aren't that great. Be prepared for 32 more jerseys that will likely be disappointments as the NHL and Fanatics will be introducing the Hometown Remix jerseys for each team this season.

Outside of a handful of Reverse Retro jerseys, there aren't many seen at games or being worn by fans because those were also mostly forgettable. The Minnesota Wild certainly have one of the better Reverse Retro jerseys as they tapped into the North Stars' colours, but the majority of the jerseys introduced in that league-wide effort have been mothballed. Let's be honest: they weren't that great.

The NHL and Fanatics released the following statement today.

Do you ever get the feeling that the NHL would slap its logo and its teams' logos on anything it could in order to make a buck? Imagine buying NHL-branded bottled water - "the same kind the pros drink!" - or NHL-branded condoms - "even you can score wearing these!" - just because the NHL licensed it. That's what this Hometown Remix campaign feels like: more junk thrown into the merchandise market.

Yes, people will throw $300 or $400 at these jerseys in order to have the latest and greatest because that proves how big of a fan they are, right? Except that there really isn't any purpose to buying these jerseys if they're going to wear them for one season and then mothball them like the Reverse Retro jerseys. Again, the NHL is bleeding fans of their money by tugging on the ol' civic pride, and I cannot justify throwing my hard-earned dollars at this merchandise.

Maybe we'll get another solid jersey like the Minnesota Wild's alternate jersey in this new offering, but when you consider that the NHL and Fanatics are 1-for-32 with the Reverse Retro jerseys from 2022-23 in terms of teams still using them, a 3% chance of seeing these Hometown Remix jerseys stand the test of time is unlikely.

Maybe if merchandise were cheaper and not so disposable, we'd see more jerseys and t-shirts worn by fans. That's not going to happen ever, though, so save your money when this new cash grab is unveiled. You're going to need every penny to buy network broadcasts of your favorite team's 84-game schedule, and I'm guaranteeing that no one will stop you on the way to the fridge in your kitchen to ask you where you got your Hometown Remix jersey this season.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!