Posted: December 16, 2024 11:12 am
By Cole Szramowski, a PennWest student who wrote this post for us as part of a class he’s taking through Heinz History Center. He thanks local hockey expert Mike Piskuric for his assistance with this article!
Johnstown, Pennsylvania is just like any city, full of rabid sports fans ready to cheer for their local team whenever they get the chance. Various professional hockey teams to call the city home have provided that opportunity since 1941, when professional hockey became a mainstay in Johnstown with the extremely short-lived Johnstown Blue Birds of the Eastern Hockey League. Later, the Johnstown Jets and Johnstown Chiefs kept pro hockey here for over 50 years, forming a deep connection with the community that remains unbroken to this day.
Pro hockey in Johnstown had a relatively disappointing start. In 1941, Shaffer Ice Palace (which was located on McMillen Street) held an exhibition game between the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University, drawing a capacity crowd of over 1,100 fans. A Canadian named Bill Hines, who owned the Baltimore Orioles of the Eastern Amateur Hockey League (EAHL), attended the game that day. The Orioles hadn’t been able to draw many fans to their games, so after seeing the huge crowd in Johnstown, Hines went to the league office and applied to move the team to Johnstown. The league approved the move, and the Johnstown Blue Birds were born, making Bill Hines the “father” of Johnstown hockey.
However, The Blue Birds almost immediately faced financial difficulties. Hines’ certainty of being able to draw large crowds evaporated — in fact, the earlier sellout of the Pitt-Penn State game that Hines had interpreted as rabid enthusiasm for hockey was actually because of fundraising efforts from a local club (Mastovich, 2011). Hines struggled to pay players as soon as 14 games into the season, when he reported to the league that nobody involved with the team had been paid in over two weeks. Hines’s inability to pay nearly ruined the team right then and there, but a Johnstown resident by the name of Harry Crichton went to the league office at Madison Square Garden and contributed $2,000 of his own money to save the team, effectively ousting the man who brought hockey to the city. Leading scorer Henry Dyck took over the operations and coaching of the team following Hines’s departure, all pay disputes were settled. The team played very well, which boosted attendance, but another problem came. The Shaffer Ice Palace became a manufacturing plant for the US military during World War II, forcing the Blue Birds to fold after only one season.
Johnstown would have to wait nine years for professional hockey to return, when the Johnstown Jets joined the EAHL in 1950. The team picked up where the Blue Birds left off, leading the EAHL in the standings through their first two seasons and finishing second in their third. They would take home two championships in 1952 and 1953. The team’s success couldn’t save the league, though — the EAHL would fold in 1953.
The Jets found a new home in the International Hockey League (a minor league which operated from 1945-2001) for the next two years. They would nearly win it all in the 1953-54 season, losing the finals in six games to the Cincinnati Mohawks. The team would later join the Eastern Hockey League (EHL), which formed from the ashes of the EAHL in 1954, and continued winning – it was one of the better teams in the league. After a few seasons of near .500 play, the team would have its greatest stretch creating a new EHL dynasty by winning three straight championships from 1959-1961. The teams were led by Johnstown hockey legend Don Hall, a nine-time EHL all-star and Cambria County sports hall of famer and fellow nine-time all-star and future championship winning coach Dick Roberge.
The team continued as part of the EHL until the league folded in 1973. That year they joined the North American Hockey League (NAHL, which operated 1973-1977), where they continued their winning ways under coach Dick Roberge, setting up a team ready to make a deep playoff run. The next season, the team made that playoff run by winning a championship. The team, led by a trio of brothers named Carlson and an all-star goaltender in Ron Docken, was a hard-nosed, violent team determined to win by any means necessary.
Coach Roberge told a very funny story to the Tribune-Democrat about how the Carlson brothers started a fight directly after the puck dropped. “We got into Binghamton about two or three weeks before the playoffs. In the team warmup, we’re out there and all the Binghamton players came out with the plastic glasses and big noses, every one of them, poking fun at the Carlson brothers. We went back in the dressing room and the boys said, ‘Coach, as soon as that puck is dropped, we’re pairing up.’ We had one heckuva fight. They went about 30 minutes until everyone got tired. We met them again in the [1974 –75 season] finals and beat them four straight.”
In fact, this team was the direct inspiration for the 1977 movie “Slap Shot” and the fictional Charlestown Chiefs. Two of the Carlson brothers would even appear in the movie, playing a set of brothers called the Hansons — the third Carlson, Dave, had been called up to the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League (NHL). Unfortunately, the team folded after the Johnstown flood of 1977, which completely destroyed their facilities. The team left behind an undeniable legacy, proving the ability to win no matter the competition put in front of them.
Pro hockey would have a very short-lived return to Johnstown in 1979 with the Red Wings, an affiliate of the Detroit Red Wings. (The team’s league began operation in 1978 as the Northeastern Hockey League but would change its name to Eastern Hockey League before it folded in 1981). The team lasted only one season, finishing well under .500.
Eight years later, a triumphant return would come in the form of the Johnstown Chiefs, named after the team depicted in “Slap Shot” after the team’s owners were unable to gain rights to the Jets name. The team was founded in 1987 as part of the the All-American Hockey League (AAHL, operational from 1986-1989), and moved to the East Coast Hockey League (which continues to operate today under the acronym ECHL) when the league was formed in 1988. The Chiefs had a rough first season but would soon regain playoff form under new head coach Steve Carlson (the former Jets player who appeared in Slap Shot as one of the Hansons). Although they failed to win a championship under Carlson, they missed the playoffs only once in four years, and even made a finals appearance in 1988-89. The photo below is of that 1989 team.
Following Carlson’s departure, the team continued to win but faced struggles throughout the 1990s and 2000s, never making it past the second round of the playoffs again. The team was also constantly switching affiliations with National Hockey League teams, working as a farm team for nine different teams: Boston Bruins, Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, Calgary Flames, Minnesota Wild, Tampa Bay Lightning, San Jose Sharks, Colorado Avalanche, and Columbus Blue Jackets. This seemingly constant state of disarray impacted the product on the ice, especially in the mid to late 2000s. This lack of consistency was reflected in the team’s underperformance, and eventually a drop in attendance. The Chiefs moved to Greenville, South Carolina following the completion of the 2010 season, leaving Johnstown without pro hockey to this day.
The history and legacy of professional hockey in Johnstown is complicated. The teams were rarely bad and had real talent coming and going from their rosters on a yearly basis. However, they were operating in a truly small market, and were constantly dealing with financial and attendance issues. These gritty, hard-working teams meshed very well with the city they resided in, a place full of gritty, hard-working people who loved hockey. The bonds formed between the pro teams and their fans remain to this day. Johnstown’s love for hockey even resulted in the town being named the first-ever Hockeyville by Kraft back in 2015, which meant the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins played a preseason game here. Today, Johnstown cheers on the Tomahawks — a Tier II junior team in the North American Hockey League’s East Division that moved to town in 2012.
