In less than two months, the NHL will celebrate the history of hockey — and the most recent successes — in the state of Florida by holding not one but two outdoor games hosted by the Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Panthers will host the New York Rangers, who are celebrating their 100th season, in the 2026 Winter Classic at the Marlins’ LoanDepot Park in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood on Jan. 2.
On Feb. 1, the Boston Bruins will visit the Lightning at the home of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Throughout the month between the two games, the NHL plans on having a traveling exhibit that makes its way from South Florida to Tampa.
The Lightning has won the Stanley Cup three times in its history including in 2020 and 2021; the Panthers have won the championship the past two seasons with one of the two Florida teams playing in the Stanley Cup Final over the past six years.
There is a lot to celebrate about hockey in Florida, for sure.
But there was hockey in Florida before the Lightning joined the NHL in 1992 and the Panthers in 1993.
And the history of hockey in Florida started in the tropics — Coral Gables, to be precise.
In the late 1920s, the fast-growing city of Coral Gables opened the Miami Coliseum on Douglas Road.
In 1938, the building added an ice surface and the building was renamed the Metropolitan Ice Palace.
With that new ice, a hockey league was born: The Tropical Hockey League.
There were four teams in the Tropical Hockey League, which was also the first to be nicknamed the ‘Grapefruit League,’ and all of them played in Coral Gables.
The four teams were the Miami Clippers, Miami Beach Pirates, Coral Gables Seminoles, and Havana Tropicals.
The first-ever professional hockey game played in Florida was on December 10, 1938; the Clippers beat the Seminoles 3-2.
The program from the first Florida Panthers game at Miami Arena on Oct. 12, 1993, featured the same design as special commemorative tickets given to the team’s original season seat holders. // @GeorgeRichards
The league, which consisted of players recruited out of Canada, only lasted one season. A planned revival a few years later ultimately failed.
The Ice Palace/Coliseum ended up living a number of lives throughout the years but was finally torn down in the 1990s.
A Publix supermarket anchors the shopping center which sits on the site today.
Professional hockey did not return to Florida for a long time, and there were only a few teams in the southern states including the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League which eventually became the Checkers.
The Charlotte Checkers have been the American Hockey League affiliate of the Florida Panthers since 2020.
Until the NHL awarded Tampa a team which started during the 1992-93 season, ice hockey in Florida was a sporadic idea and mostly played at the low-level minor league levels.
Jacksonville had a team in the EHL, and the Sunshine Hockey League started in 1992 with teams in towns with small arenas such as Lakeland, Daytona Beach, and West Palm Beach.
Miami was supposed to be part of the upstart World Hockey Association both when it began in 1970 and again in 1972.
The Miami Screaming Eagles had planned to build an arena in a business park being built not far from Hialeah Race Track in what is now Doral, but Dade County refused to give them a building permit which shut down construction.
The Miami team, which had signed future Hall of Fame goalie Bernie Parent, planned on opening the 1972-73 season by playing host to the Winnipeg Jets.
Only the team never played a game after deciding that the Miami Beach Convention Center and Sportatorium in western Pembroke Pines were unsuitable for ice hockey.
Parent and the Screaming Eagles landed in Philadelphia and became the Blazers. The Blazers were a ragtag bunch who had their opener canceled due to unsafe ice conditionas and moved twice more, going to Vancouver before ending as the Calgary Cowboys.
A couple of WHA teams also tried to move to South Florida a number of other times to play in the Sportatorium only things never worked out.
Only when the Miami Arena was built to lure an expansion NBA team in the mid-1980s did the area’s lack of having a suitable venue for pro sports stop being a problem.
A day after the Lightning played the Rangers at Miami Arena during the 1992-93 season, the NHL announced that Wayne Huizenga would be getting an expansion team along with Anaheim.
There was also a shortlived WHA2 league which was based in Florida and had the Miami Manatees briefly play at Miami Arena before ending their lone season playing in front of dozens at Incredible Ice in Coral Springs.
Since the 1990s, Florida had a host of minor league teams join the Panthers and Lighting on the sports landscape including the Orlando Solar Bears (IHL/ECHL), Tallahassee Tiger Sharks (ECHL), Florida Everblades (ECHL), Pensacola Ice Pilots (ECHL), and Jacksonville Icemen (ECHL).
The Miami Matadors of the ECHL replaced the Panthers at Miami Arena when the NHL team moved to Sunrise; the Matadors lasted one season.
The Panthers and Lightning, obviously, have not only succeed in Florida but have helped the game grow in the Sunshine State.
When the NHL announced it was bringing two outdoor games to Florida, it cited the growth of youth hockey in the state.
“Stanley Cups, strings of sellouts and the exponential growth of youth and high school hockey throughout the state have demonstrated that Florida is a hockey hotbed,’’ NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said when the game was announced.
“ Outdoor NHL games in the Sunshine State? Never let it be said that our League isn’t willing to accept a challenge.’’
ON DECK: GAME No. 17
WASHINGTON CAPITALS at FLORIDA PANTHERS
