10 Things You Didn’t Know About Rhode Island Hockey

The Providence Reds hockey team played in the American Hockey League from 1936 to 1977 at the Rhode Island Auditorium and later at the Providence Civic Center. Courtesy of the Providence Public Library Archives.

1. The Boston Bruins are in their centennial season, and Providence has been their farm base for the plurality of that stretch. The old Providence (and later Rhode Island) Reds affiliated with Boston for seven nonconsecutive years, and now the Providence Bruins (established in 1992) enjoy the longest uninterrupted AHL-NHL partnership. That’s all the more fitting considering Boston was America’s first NHL franchise.

2. Central Falls native and Brown University alum Malcolm Greene Chace spearheaded the spread of organized hockey from its native Canada to the United States. In the early-to-mid-1890s, he assembled a group of Ivy League student-athletes who toured Ontario and Quebec, then dispersed to start intercollegiate programs on their respective campuses.

3. The Reds and their descendants in Binghamton, New York, and Hartford, Connecticut, constitute hockey’s longest-tenured minor league team, starting in 1926 in the old Canadian-American League. They were in Rhode Island for the first fifty-one of those ninety-eight seasons.

The team changed their name to the Rhode Island Reds during their last season. Courtesy of the Providence Public Library Archives.

4. In 1948, Rhode Island became the second New England state (after Massachusetts) and the eighth overall to produce a USA Hockey national champion at any level. 

5. Women’s college hockey was born at Brown in 1965, after first-year student Nancy Schieffelin disguised herself as a man to play a scrimmage game with the men’s team. The Bears initially scrimmaged club teams until other colleges started following their lead in the 1970s.

6. Since the NHL entry draft started in 1963, eight Americans have gone first overall. Mount St. Charles Academy grads Brian Lawton (1983) and Bryan Berard (1995) accounted for two of the first three.

7. In 1985, the Providence Civic Center hosted the inaugural men’s Hockey East championship, the first game in which goalies placed water bottles atop their nets.

Courtesy of the Providence Public Library Archives.

8. One regular-season NHL game has been played in the state. Amid the P-Bruins’ inaugural season, the Boston Bruins took to the Civic Center’s ice for a 3-1 win over New Jersey on March 16, 1993.

9. The Providence Friars took part in the longest U.S. women’s college hockey game at 145 minutes and thirty-five seconds of action. Archrival New Hampshire won the 1996 ECAC championship, 3-2, in quintuple-overtime.

10. The West Warwick preteen who in 1992 gave the P-Bruins mascot its superb name, Samboni, went on to play hockey in Rhode Island at every possible level. Drew Omicioli spent four years at Providence College, followed by an end-of-season AHL tryout with Providence in 2002.

The Providence Bruins. Courtesy of Go Providence.