For those that are unaware, there are specific numbers that cannot be worn in the NHL and on specific teams. Most of these are retired numbers that teams no longer keep in circulation, but specific numbers like #99 are retired league-wide so no one can wear that number again. There are two numbers that the NHL demanded be removed from circulation due to their ability to mess with the NHL's early statistical programs, and those numbers are #0, last worn by Neil Sheehy, and #00, last worn by Martin Biron as seen above. However, it seems the NHL has evolved enough that these zeroes are no longer a problem for their stats programs thanks to one team's signing announcement today!
The Minnesota Wild were going about their business today by posting on their website that they had hired Peter Thome as their new Hockey Operations Analyst. Nothing in that seems earth-moving, but they tacked on that Thome will also serve as the Wild's Emergency Backup Goalie (EBUG) this season. As you may recall, every team is required to have an official EBUG under contract this season.
The former NCAA and ECHL netminder and former 2016 Columbus Blue Jackets draft pick had a short career stopping pucks at the professional level, but he's also worked as an analyst in the USHL and as a video coach in the AHL. All of that is fine and dandy for Thome while he's wearing a suit, but there was one line that stuck out about what he'll be wearing as a goaltender for the Wild if he's needed:
"He will wear sweater No. 00 with Minnesota."
How can that be after the league banned the number in 1996 over issues with their player database and the inability to accurately record players using those numbers? Did it take thirty years for the NHL to figure out how to properly enter #00 as a valid number into that database? Will we see all EBUGs wearing #00 this season based on Thome's number? We all have questions that need answers!
I've seen a few websites indicate that all EBUGs this season will be assigned #00, and that may very well happen. However, there is no language in the NHL-NHLPA CBA Memorandum of Understanding filed last season that speaks to this number assignment and that includes Attachment 87 that speaks directly to the new EBUG rules that teams are required to follow. Logically, however, that would make sense.
Whatever the case may be for the other 31 teams, there will be one player who has #00 as his assigned jersey number next season. Congratulations to Peter Thome not only on his hiring today with the Minnesota Wild, but for becoming the answer to an NHL trivia question one day! Will #0 be the next number to be reinstated?
Dubbed "The World's Most Famous Arena", there aren't many shows nor events that pass up the opportunity to work in Madison Square Garden. Located in Manhatten, "the Garden" is officially the second-busiest music arena in the world in terms of ticket sales, the oldest arena to host an NBA team, and the oldest arena to host an NHL team. There have been three other Madison Square Garden that have been demolished since the original opened in 1879, but the current building standing between Seventh and Eighth avenues in New York City is the one that has garnered the most attention as the arena that hosts around 320 events a year including sports, concerts, and other major events!
I'm not here to talk about New York's arena, however, because Dermot Rigley, founder and CEO of Prime Arena Holdings, made a bold proclamation today with the announcement of a new two-rink facility being proposed for the neighbourhood of Cherrywood inside Dublin, Ireland! According to his statement today, "Rigley has described the proposed project as one that will bring the Madison Square Garden experience" to Ireland's largest and most populous city!
I'm not here to take the wind out of Rigley's sails by any means, but Prime Arena Holdings stepped forward as the company behind this ambitious project, showing off initial renderings that included CGI images and flythrough videos by Populous, the same architects behind the Sphere in Las Vegas, Yankee Stadium in New York, and the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. It should be noted that Prime Arena Holdings has NOT formally submitted a planning application for this project yet.
The details state that the building will have two Olympic-sized ice rinks and an 8000-capacity arena, expandable to 10,500 for major events and concerts. It's hoped that this new facility will be ready to open by 2029 or 2030, but Brendan O'Brien of the Irish Examiner notes in his article, "The Olympic Federation of Ireland has backed a project which will serve as a hub for its winter sports programme and one where an ice hockey team akin to the Belfast Giants at the O2 will serve as anchor tenants and play in the British league."
Might we see an EIHL team in the heart of Dublin, Ireland?
"The design for Prime Arena will bring the ice hockey spectators close to the action and create an incredible atmosphere and fan experience," Marian Moravek, design lead at Populous, described to O'Brien, "while the warm, layered facade and public plaza will give the arena a distinct identity as a focus for Cherrywood."
As you know, this blog is against public funding of arenas that will be used by billionaires, but we know that EIHL teams are setup somewhat differently. Initial estimates for this new "Madison Square Dublin" were around €190 million ($222 million USD), but final totals could fetch upwards of €250 million ($292 million USD). Reports suggest that "several US and Canadian ice hockey stars, including former Stanley Cup winners, recently emerged as investors in the project," but it seems some public monies will go into the project.
Estimates see the new arena attracting "over 1.5 million visitors annually", and, as reported by Eoin Burke-Kennedy in The Irish Times, "Mary Rose Burke, Dublin Chamber of Commerce chief executive, said the project would 'deliver a significant and lasting boost to Dublin's economy, supporting businesses across hospitality, tourism, retail and local services' while Tourism Ireland chief Alice Mansergh said it 'would offer opportunities to attract visitors from overseas'."
Allow me to "wet blanket" this growing excitement for the arena by suggesting that Prime Arena Holdings should get its application submitted ASAP and start lining up investors for that 2029 opening date. Even if they open in 2030, a Dublin EIHL team will also need some time to get off the ground. And assuming this mixed-use complex works for everyone where public skating can happen while an EIHL team practices, perhaps we'll see Irish-born and Irish-trained hockey players find their way into leagues across the globe one day!
We're a long way from those moments, and I'll be the first to say that building a €250-million arena is the last thing an emerging hockey country should do, but Dublin, Ireland seems to have its heart set on welcoming its first EIHL team in the city's history to inspire more young Irishmen and Irishwomen to hit the ice! Maybe it will happen with a little of that Irish luck, but "an lao ite i mbolg na bó"!
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!
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!
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.
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