Peterborough Phantoms

Peterborough DALROD Phantoms
City Peterborough, United Kingdom
League EPIHL
Founded 2002
Home arena Planet Ice Peterborough
Capacity: 1250
Ice size: 180ft x 85ft
Colours White, Navy Blue, Orange and Light Blue
Owner(s) DALROD
Head coach Slava Koulikov
Captain James Ferrara
Website GoPhantoms.co.uk
Current season

The DALROD sponsored Peterborough Phantoms are a British ice hockey team that play at the Planet Ice Peterborough Arena, in Bretton, Peterborough.

The Peterborough Phantoms ice hockey club was founded in 2002. It replaced the former city based team, the Peterborough Pirates, and plays in the same Ice Arena. The team currently competes in the semi-professional English Premier Ice Hockey League (EPIHL) which is the second tier in British ice hockey (below the fully professional Elite league EIHL).

The team won the English Premier League and Cup Double in its first season (2002–03) and retained the Cup the following year. After a gap of four years further silverware arrived with the winning of the 2007–08 Knock-out Cup. This heralded the very successful 2008–09 campaign in which the Phantoms, coached by Canadian Colin Patterson, won the 'Treble' of English Premier League, English Premier Cup and (for the first time in their history) the Play-offs.

The club are associated with the Peterborough Sports Aid Charity and hold charity fund-raising matches on their behalf.

Club History

Ice hockey in Peterborough was born in late 1981 just days after the first ice rink built in the UK since the 1960s was opened in the city.

A small group of like minded enthusiasts, borrowing equipment from wherever they could and supplementing training with sessions on the frozen washes of the fens, generated sufficient interest for the birth of Peterborough Pirates in the summer of 1982. The team was deemed strong enough to join Division One of the three division National League and two seasons later the side won promotion to the top flight of UK ice hockey.

With crowds topping the 1,000 mark on a regular basis, Pirates went from strength to strength and in 1991 reached the Championship Play-Off Final at Wembley and appeared live on mainstream TV. Despite returning to Wembley the following season, Pirates struggled to thrive in the increasingly competitive 1990s as new arena based teams arrived on the scene in numbers.

In 2002, Peterborough Pirates hung up their skates for the last time but many of those who played in the final Pirates game were back on the ice a few months later in a new guise as the Peterborough Phantoms playing in the English Premier League. The change delivered immediate rewards as the Phantoms went on to secure a League and Cup double in their debut season and retained the Cup the following season.

As some of the "old guard" players called it a day, so a new crop of exciting, locally produced players came through to spearhead an exciting new era for Peterborough ice hockey and after winning the Knockout Cup in season 2007/2008, the team went on to achieve the unthinkable in 2008/2009, winning all three major honours and, in doing so, delivering the most successful season in the history of Peterborough ice hockey.

Based at the Peterborough Arena in Bretton, Phantoms will be competing in the English Premier League this season. The majority of home fixtures are played on Sunday evenings, with a small number played on Saturdays and mid-week. The regular season starts in September and ends at the prestigious Play-Off Championship Finals in April.

During the season, Phantoms will be both hosting and visiting teams from Manchester, Milton Keynes, Basingstoke, Bracknell, Guildford, Swindon, Telford and Sheffield.

Club honours

2016–17 Team Roster

Netminders

Defenders

Forwards

Former players

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 5/23/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.