The Magic City region is home to one of the top teams in the Southern Professional Hockey League. The Birmingham Bulls play out of the Pelham Civic Complex and Ice Area in Pelham, Alabama, which has a capacity of 4,100. Coach Craig Simchuk, who captained the Bulls from 2017 to 2019, was promoted to head coach before the 2020-21 season after one year as an assistant coach. The Bulls are one of five teams playing in the SPHL, including the Huntsville Havoc, the Knoxville Ice Bears, the Macon Mayhem and the Pensacola Ice Flyers.

History of the Birmingham Bulls

Ice hockey has had a long tradition in Birmingham, Alabama, dating back to the original Birmingham Bulls, who played in the World Hockey Association from 1976 to 1979, and the Central Hockey League from 1979 to 1981. Art Clarkson, who brought the Birmingham Barons baseball team to the Magic City in 1981, purchased the Cincinnati Cyclones of the ECHL in 1992 to become the Bulls, and sold the team in 1997. The ECHL Bulls moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 2001, and are now known as the Adirondack Thunder, with the Alabama Slammers of the WHA 2 playing in Birmingham for one season, in 2003-04.

Clarkson brought hockey back to Birmingham in 2017 with an expansion team retaining the classic Bulls name and ECHL logo. Jamey Hicks, who won the ECHL’s Most Valuable Player award in 1997-98 with the Bulls, became the new team’s first head coach. Clarkson resigned as managing general partner in 2019, and passed away later that year, but not before seeing the Bulls come into their own, with the Bulls finishing second in the regular season to the Peoria Rivermen for the William B. Coffey Trophy, and runners-up to the Huntsville Havoc in the 2019 President’s Cup finals.