(Note: the following article originally appeared in the program for the ECHL/SPHL Booster Club Jamboree last weekend, hosted by the Worcester Railers Booster Club in Southbridge, Massachusetts, and was edited for length. This is the entire submitted text, which was significantly longer than the space available to print it.)
While the ECHL/SPHL Jamboree is celebrating its 35th anniversary Worcester hockey has also hit a milestone as this upcoming season marks 30 years since the arrival of professional hockey in central Massachusetts. Worcester’s pro hockey history officially started on May 5, 1994, when Roy Boe, former owner of the ABA/NBA’s New York Nets and perhaps best known in the sports world for selling future basketball Hall of Famer Julius Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers, officially purchased the American Hockey League’s Springfield Indians and moved them to the city.
After renaming the team “IceCats” in June Boe then hired five-time Stanley Cup champion Jim Roberts as the franchise’s first head coach and general manager. There is likely no moment in Worcester hockey history that had more impact than the hiring of Roberts, as his connections in the hockey world gave Boe and the IceCats instant credibility with NHL organizations.
Roberts and his wife Judy were both instrumental in the forming of the Worcester IceCats Booster Club, and much of the charity work the current Worcester Railers Booster Club does is due to the seeds planted by Jim and Judy during the Booster Club’s early years.
After starting their opening season 0-6-1 Roberts, who was at the helm of the only independent AHL franchise, decided to blow up the roster and made several trades on October 20, 1994, including one with the IHL’s Atlanta Knights that saw a journeyman ECHL player named Terry Virtue joining the team. Two days later the IceCats had their first franchise win, a 5-2 win against the Providence Bruins, in which Virtue scored a goal.
By the time Virtue’s career in Worcester was over, in 2003-2004 after his second stint with the organization, he would be the franchise leader in games (455), assists (154), points (210), and penalty minutes (1,083). His career numbers top those categories for all of Worcester’s pro hockey history, and Virtue was the first player named to Worcester’s Hockey Hall of Fame.
Late in the opening season, it was announced that the IceCats would become the AHL affiliate of the St Louis Blues, and that began a long relationship between the two cities that stretched into recent times when the Blues and Railers had an unofficial secondary affiliation.
With an NHL affiliate sewn up, Roberts could focus on coaching, and as a result, the team improved by almost 30 points from their inaugural campaign and made the AHL’s Calder Cup playoffs for the first time. The next summer Roberts left the IceCats and was promoted to assistant coach in St. Louis. Three weeks later Greg Gilbert was named the IceCats’ new head coach. Gilbert led the IceCats to their first division title in his rookie campaign, and into the playoffs in each of his four seasons with the club, twice making the second round.
Unlike the rosters Roberts coached Gilbert’s teams were littered with then-current and future NHL players; names like Jamie Rivers, Michal Handzus, Jamal Mayers, Rory Fitzpatrick, Jamie McLennan, Bryce Salvador, Brent Johnson, Jochen Hecht, and Marty Reasoner were keys to the success the IceCats saw in the regular season.
In the summer of 2000, a year after a second affiliation with the Blues was announced, Gilbert was out as head coach, heading to the Calgary organization. Don Granato was hired as his replacement.
In December of 2000, the second-most important trade in Worcester hockey history took place when the Blues acquired forward Eric Boguniecki from the Florida Panthers in exchange for Andrej Podkonicky. Boguniecki would eventually play in parts of four seasons with Worcester, winning the AHL’s Les Cunningham Award as the league’s MVP in the 2001-02 season.
In 2000-01 the IceCats won the Macgregor Kilpatrick Trophy as the AHL’s regular season champions, and Granato was named the AHL’s Coach of the Year. Unfortunately, Worcester’s most promising season ended in heartbreak as the IceCats lost game 7 of the division finals 3-2 in overtime when one of their defensemen accidentally knocked the puck into his own net during a wild goalmouth scramble.
In September of 2001, the Blues announced that they had completed negotiations to purchase IceCats from Boe. While it was not known at the time, that was essentially the beginning of the end of the IceCats in Worcester.
Like Gilbert, many of Granato’s players had good NHL careers. Dwayne Roloson played almost 600 NHL games after his Baz Bastien Award winning season in Worcester as the AHL’s top goaltender. Barret Jackman was named the Calder Memorial Trophy in 2003 as the NHL’s Rookie of the Year. Forward Jay McClement’s NHL career was over 900 games, and defenseman Dennis Wideman played in over 800.
In November of 2004, it was announced that the Blues had sold the IceCats to Bruce Saurs and Anne Griffith, owners of the ECHL’s Peoria Rivermen. On April 16, 2005, Patrick Wellar made his debut with the team, becoming the 276th and final IceCats player.
That would not be the end of AHL hockey in the city however as on January 6, 2006, the San Jose Sharks announced they were moving their AHL affiliate, the Cleveland Barons, to Worcester to begin play at the DCU Center for the 2006-07 season.
Unfortunately for hockey fans in Worcester the San Jose Sharks never seemed interested in putting a competitive team in the city, instead focusing on development. In their nine seasons in Worcester, the Sharks finished third or better in the Atlantic Division just twice, winning the division in 2009-10 and finishing third in 2014-15. Five of those seasons they failed to make the Calder Cup playoffs.
There was one shining moment in the franchise’s history when they hosted the AHL All-Star Classic in 2009. For many years afterward the two-day event was considered by those in the AHL as the best ever held, and 15 years later is still considered the gold standard.
Despite the lack of success on the ice many Sharks players went on to have significant NHL careers. Joe Pavelski, a four-time NHL All-Star, began his pro career in Worcester and ranks in the top 10 for American-born players in multiple NHL stat categories.
Players with over 400 NHL games who played their formative years in Worcester for the Sharks include Justin Braun, Logan Couture, Dylan DeMelo, Jason Demers, Andrew Desjardins, Barclay Goodrow, Yanni Gourde, Matt Irwin, Devin Setoguchi, and Tommy Wingles. Goaltenders Thomas Greiss, Alex Stalock, and Aaron Dell also saw significant action in Worcester.
The Worcester Sharks had just one head coach in their franchise history, Roy Sommer, who recently retired from the AHL as the league’s all-time wins leader.
In 2015 the San Jose Sharks, along with several other western NHL teams, moved their AHL affiliates closer to their NHL teams in what was dubbed the “AHL’s Western Migration”. Because San Jose thought there would be one more season in Worcester they and the city were unprepared for the possibility of an ECHL team moving to the DCU Center, and Worcester went without pro hockey for two seasons because of that.
But the wait for news of a new hockey franchise in the city didn’t take nearly as long as mid-December of 2015 businessman Cliff Rucker told longtime sportswriter Bill Ballou of the Worcester Telegram that he had negotiated a five-year lease at the DCU Center, and the wheels were turning on pro hockey returning to the city.
On February 8, 2016, Rucker announced at a press conference that he was unanimously approved by the ECHL Board of Governors for a franchise to begin play in the 2017-18 season.
Soon after the announcement perhaps the most important hire the Railers have made so far took place when Mike Myers, who worked for the Worcester Sharks with the title “Senior Director of Business and Community Development” but by the end of the franchise was essentially “Mr. Everything”, was hired to be vice president of community relations for the Railers. Myers being in the organization made it an easy choice for him to be promoted to president of the Worcester Railers after President/General Manager Toby O’Brien left for an NHL job.
While the Railers have struggled a bit on the ice Myers has led the organization to being named the ECHL Community Service Team of the Year for five of their seven seasons, including winning the award in 2020-21 when the team suspended operations for a season due to COVID-19. In 2020, then-Railers defender Connor Doherty was named the ECHL’s Community Service Award winner.
No account of hockey in Worcester would be complete without mention of two high-level amateur teams that called the city home over the years. In the 1954-55 season, Larz Anderson, who owned an ice rink in the city, put together an amateur team to play in the Eastern Hockey League, a mid-level pro league. The team was needed to balance out the schedule and lasted just a single season.
The Worcester Blades, a team that competed in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, played one season at the Worcester Ice Canter after moving from Boston. The team saw little success in the city in the 2018-19 season, their one season in the city, having to compete for players with the fully pro Boston Pride of the National Women’s Hockey League. The CWHL folded in the spring of 2019.
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