NEW HORIZON: Scott Johnson, general manager of First Horizon Coliseum, speaks at a press conference announcing a new pro hockey team at the venue. (Michael Strider)
For the first time in two decades, the First Horizon Coliseum, in Greensboro, North Carolina, will be home ice for a professional hockey team. The yet-to-be-named franchise drops the puck in October 2025 as the ECHL’s 30th member.
Formerly the Greensboro Coliseum, the venue has a long history with the sport from minor league teams all the way up to the National Hockey League, when the building was the temporary home of the Carolina Hurricanes for two seasons after the club moved from Hartford, Connecticut.
The new ECHL team, temporarily dubbed Greensboro Pro Hockey, is owned and managed by Zawyer Sports & Entertainment. The company is based in Jacksonville, Florida, but has roots in North Carolina, including the American Hockey League’s Charlotte Checkers and the Gastonia Baseball Club. Zawyer also operates the ECHL’s Jacksonville Icemen and the Savannah Ghost Pirates and serves as a consultant for the ECHL’s Tahoe Knight Monsters.
There will be a Name the Team contest at GreensboroProHockey.com for fans to submit ideas to name the franchise.
“We are always in growth mode but this was our targeted next market,” said Andy Kaufmann, CEO and founder of Zawyer following the announcement. “This was a no-doubter.”
Hockey’s history of success in Greensboro, experience in the region and a relationship with OVG360, which took over venue operations on July 1, paved the way for the franchise, according to Kaufmann. OVG360 also operates the Enmarket Arena, home of the Savannah Ghost Pirates. Oak View Group is parent company to VenuesNow.
“OVG is a dear partner of ours in the management space,” said Kaufmann. “The facility is beautiful. It checks all the boxes and has the makings of what could be a league attendance leading team.”
Zawyer has a track record of community engagement and selling tickets. The Jacksonville Icemen led the ECHL in attendance in both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons and are consistently among the league’s leaders in group sales.
In addition, the Savannah Ghost Pirates led the league in season memberships and sold out 33 of 36 games in their inaugural 2022-23 season.
“We don’t go to cities and leave cities or buy teams and move teams,” said Kaufmann. “We operate some of the most successful teams in professional hockey and are confident we are here to stay in Greensboro.”
Details of the multi-year deal were not announced. “It’s a minimum of five years, that can go many years beyond that,” said Scott Johnson, general manager of the 22,000-capacity First Horizon Coliseum. “The goal is to continue to grow the product over time.”
In the short term, the venue will be making upgrades to get game-ready for the 2025-2026 season.
“When we played hockey in the ‘90s, we played with steel dasher boards,” Johnson said. “The NHL does not allow steel dasher boards anymore because they are solid as a rock.”
The coliseum will be updating the entire hockey setup with new dashers, plexiglass, benches, goals, nets and ice surfacing machines. The arena showcased two of those machines wrapped with coliseum signage for the announcement, one from 1990 and the other from 1997. The cost of the retrofit will be covered by a hotel/motel tax that can be used for capital needs at the coliseum, which is owned by the city. The budget is roughly $1.5 million.
Zawyer operates the Community First Igloo in Jacksonville, Ghost Pirates Ice in Savannah and 32 Degrees Marketing. Johnson said in the future, the coliseum and city could partner with the company on developing rinks for youth sports, sponsorship opportunities and an NHL affiliate for Greensboro Pro Hockey.
“Long term, what we’d love to do is create a better relationship with the Carolina Hurricanes and continue to grow the sport of hockey in North Carolina,” he said. “The building, OVG and Zawyer are all in this together.”
Coming off the recent naming rights announcement and the addition of professional sports tenant, Doug Higgons, senior vice president of facilities for OVG360 said, “We are just getting started. These are just announcements. Now. we need to actually put the game plan in place and start activating all the way around.”
Having a strong tenant will help bolster attendance at events throughout all nine venues across the coliseum complex. ECHL league teams typically play 72 games each season, which will making it a cornerstone for activity at the coliseum.
“That’s our job,” chuckled Higgons. “Every good arena manager is afraid of the dark. We don’t want dark nights.”
Professional hockey in Greensboro dates to 1959, the year the Greensboro Coliseum opened.
ECHL commissioner emeritus Pat Kelly was there as a player and was a special guest Friday at the announcement.
In 1959, all 14 players on the team were Canadian and the furthest south Kelly had traveled was Buffalo, New York. He recalled some challenges adapting to southern cuisine when he mistook breakfast grits for cream of wheat.
“From that day, I’ve never tasted grits again,” laughed Kelly. “But it’s nice to be back in Greensboro and I remember the first game we played in this building. It was sold out with 5,000 seats and the fans went crazy.”
The team was the Greensboro Generals of the old Eastern Hockey League. They were an expansion franchise when the Troy Bruins moved from the old International Hockey League to the EHL.
The Generals were successful in Greensboro and made it to the finals four times, including three seasons in a row, and won the ECHL championship (1962-1963 season).
Following the 1972-1973 season, the Generals left the ECHL for the newly formed Southern Hockey League. They continued to play in the Greensboro Coliseum from 1973-1975, but didn’t have the same success and moved to the smaller Piedmont Arena. The team folded halfway through the 1976-1977 season.
“We spent five winters in Greensboro,” recalled Kelly, for whom the ECHL’s Kelly Cup is named. “But they weren’t really winters, they were more like summers to us Canadians. My buddies would say, ‘Yeah, you getta’ lot of rain down south.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but we don’t have to shovel rain.’”
Greensboro was without a hockey team until 1989, until the Greensboro Monarchs joined the ECHL as an expansion franchise.
In their inaugural season, the team won the Riley Cup in the ECHL finals when they defeated the Thunderbirds, based in neighboring Winston-Salem. The franchise reached the playoffs in every season but was surrendered back to the league when the Monarchs ownership obtained an expansion franchise in the American Hockey League at the conclusion of the 1994-1995 ECHL season.
The team was renamed the Carolina Monarchs, a minor league affiliate of the Florida Panthers. They played at the coliseum for the 1995-1996 season before their lease was revoked when the Hartford Whalers of the National Hockey League moved south became the Carolina Hurricanes. The Monarchs moved to New Haven, Connecticut and became the New Haven Beast.
Prior to the Hurricanes’ arrival, the coliseum was required to make significant upgrades to satisfy NHL regulations. Among them were the addition of VIP suites, a members only club area and upgrades to the ice surface and locker room facilities. In 1999, the Hurricanes left the Greensboro Coliseum for their permanent home in Raleigh, North Carolina. The team’s current home is the 20,000-capacity Lenovo Center.
That year, the ECHL returned to Greensboro with a new incarnation of the Greensboro Generals but they didn’t have the original fire on the ice and dissolved in 2004.
“I can’t wait to see the first hockey game in Greensboro coming up in 2025-2026,” said Kelly. “Thanks for all the things in my lifetime that started in Greensboro, North Carolina.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated.