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The profile · researched 4 November 2026
Ninety minutes from Atlanta, a B-52s joke turned into the fastest-rising club in southern hockey
The Athens Rock Lobsters spent two seasons dominating the Federal Prospects Hockey League and filling a $146m arena, then jumped a tier to the SPHL for 2026–27 under a new general manager and head coach. Four games into that first league season they opened with a shutout and have since split results.
A fan vote, a band and a $146m building
Athens Pro Hockey announced on 28 March 2024 that the city would get an expansion team in the Federal Prospects Hockey League. By May 2024 a public naming vote had settled on Rock Lobsters, after the debut single by The B-52s, the band that formed in Athens in 1976. Barry and Nancy Cohen are the co-owners; Scott Hull is club president.
The home building is Akins Ford Arena at 300 N Thomas Street, owned by the unified government of Athens-Clarke County and operated by the Classic Center Authority. Ground was broken on 28 April 2022, the project cost $146m, and the doors opened on 13 December 2024. It holds 5,600 for hockey, 7,000 for end-stage concerts and 8,500 in the round. Players and supporters call it The Tank.
The arena's late completion meant the club's first home game waited two months into its own inaugural season and survived one outright cancellation. When it finally happened, on 13 December 2024, Athens beat the Mississippi Sea Wolves 3-2, Garrett Milan scoring the winner with five minutes left in the third period. Members of The B-52s took a ceremonial puck drop and were given personalised jerseys, and the ribbon-cutting was held the same night with Athens-Clarke County mayor Kelly Girtz present. Two second-period fights produced four ejections, which set a tone the crowd evidently enjoyed.
Two FPHL seasons, 87 wins, no playoff round won
The first season was close to a procession. Athens finished 2024–25 at 43-10-3 for 121 points, scoring 220 goals and conceding 137, and head coach Steve Martinson was named FPHL coach of the year. The playoffs did not follow the script: the Columbus River Dragons knocked them out 3-2 in the opening round.
Garrett Rutledge was appointed head coach on 3 June 2025 and the regular season got better again. The 2025–26 record was 44-11-1 for 124 points, with 275 goals for and 180 against, and the club took the FPHL's Continental Division title. The first round was worse than the year before — a 7-2 loss to the Pee Dee IceCats ended it.
That is 87 regular-season wins and a division banner across two years, with nothing to show in the post-season. It is the one gap in the record the club carried up into the SPHL, and the reason the move was framed as a competitive step rather than a reward.
The step up, and a new man running hockey operations
On 13 May 2026 the Rock Lobsters confirmed they would leave the FPHL and join the Southern Professional Hockey League as its 12th franchise from 2026–27, staying at Akins Ford Arena. The stated reasoning was lower travel costs and a higher standard of opposition. SPHL commissioner Doug Price said the club had shown "what a successful franchise looks like; strong ownership, a fantastic arena, and a passionate fan base". Todd Mackin, president of Spire Holdings, said the move made sense competitively and operationally. Hull called it an exciting moment for the club and for the city.
Scott Burt was named general manager and head coach on 29 May 2026, taking charge of hockey operations as well as the bench. His background is in the ECHL, a tier above the SPHL: the Idaho Steelheads, the Rapid City Rush and, most recently, the Greensboro Gargoyles through their first season. Burt described joining at an important moment in the organisation's history.
Season tickets for the new league went on sale on 1 April 2026, before a coach had been hired. The full schedule followed on 30 July 2026: 30 home dates between October and March, mostly Friday and Saturday evenings with some Sunday afternoons, plus a Thanksgiving-week game, a New Year's Eve fixture and the annual Education Day morning game. The travel map is now Macon, Birmingham, Fayetteville, Pensacola, Roanoke, Knoxville, Huntsville, Evansville, Peoria, Quad City and Pee Dee.
The crowds, and what they have done to hockey in Georgia
Attendance is the club's strongest number. Year one drew more than 97,000 across 26 home games, an average of 3,766. The 2025–26 season brought 125,611 through the doors over 28 home dates, including ten sellouts above 5,500. Across the two FPHL seasons the total passed 229,000, averaging 4,486 — figures that put a third-tier club in a college-football town ahead of plenty of teams a division above it.
Stadium Journey's David Welch reviewed the building on 11 April 2025 and scored it 3.71 overall, with four out of five for both atmosphere and concessions. Tickets started at $28 after fees, parking added $20. The concourse carries a mural of Georgia musicians including James Brown, Ray Charles, Duane Allman, OutKast, Gladys Knight and the B-52s' Cindy Wilson, which is about as direct a statement of why the team is called what it is called.
The wider effect was picked up locally. A Grady Newsource report on 4 April 2025 noted that Georgia had 2,215 registered youth hockey players against Ohio's 18,034, and that the new arena had given the University of Georgia's Ice Dawgs and Lady Ice Dawgs a far bigger stage. Jonathan Peters, head of UGA's journalism department, said that before the Rock Lobsters arrived he had barely had a conversation about hockey in Athens; afterwards people started coming to him for it. The building adds a third tenant in March 2027, when the Athens Crush begin play in the Indoor Football League.
Where the season stands
The SPHL era opened on 16 October 2026 with a 2-0 win over the Macon Mayhem. Connor Galloway scored at 11:59 of the second period from a Devyn Mayea assist, Joe Mack added an empty-netter, and Carter McPhail made 29 saves. It was a third consecutive season-opening win in the club's three-year existence and a second consecutive opening-night shutout, after a 10-0 FPHL win over Indiana with McPhail also in net.
McPhail was named Warrior Hockey SPHL player of the week on 20 October. Athens then beat Macon 6-3 on 23 October in a nine-goal game, lost in a shootout to the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs on 24 October for a first SPHL defeat, and lost 5-3 to the Birmingham Bulls on 30 October in the first meeting between the clubs. Early returns, in other words, look like a competent team in a harder league rather than the runaway side of the FPHL years.
The next three home dates are Fayetteville on 6 November, Birmingham on 7 November and Pensacola on 20 November, all at 7.05pm.
The show, now
A Rock Lobsters night runs the standard professional length — three 20-minute periods with two intermissions, roughly two and a half hours from puck drop, with most home games at 7.05pm on Fridays and Saturdays and some Sunday afternoons across the 30-date 2026–27 schedule. There is no support act in the music sense; the shape of the evening is the game itself plus in-house entertainment, which Stadium Journey's April 2025 review described as dance cams during stoppages, a host running games on the concourse, and on-ice contests between periods. Mascot Clawdius, an upright red lobster, debuted on 22 February 2025 and works the lower bowl. The reviewer logged an emerging habit of supporters making lobster-claw gestures after goals, scored the atmosphere four out of five and the food four out of five — house-made chips with pimento cheese dip, smoked brisket sandwiches, Terrapin beer from the local brewery — and rated the whole visit 3.71, with tickets from $28 after fees and parking at $20 on top. The concourse mural of Georgia musicians, Cindy Wilson of The B-52s among them, is the reason first-timers tend to arrive early. Crowds have been the headline rather than the hockey: 125,611 across 28 home dates in 2025–26, with ten of them selling out above 5,500 in a building that holds 5,600 for hockey, so the cheap seats are not reliably available on the night. Themed nights are a fixture of the current calendar, including a Thanksgiving-week game, a New Year's Eve fixture and a morning Education Day game for school groups.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · rocklobstershockey.com · rocklobstershockey.com · rocklobstershockey.com · rocklobstershockey.com · rocklobstershockey.com · oursportscentral.com
Pictures
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited
TarheelBornBred · CC0
TarheelBornBred · CC0
