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TicketsSports · USBirmingham Bulls v. Macon MayhemPelham Civic Complex · PelhamTicketsSports · USBirmingham Bulls v. Macon MayhamPelham Civic Complex · PelhamTicketsUndefined · USAthens Rock Lobsters vs. Birmingham BullsAkins Arena at The Classic Center · AthensTicketsSports · USHuntsville Havoc Vs. Birmingham BullsVon Braun Center Propst Arena · HuntsvilleThe profile · researched 4 November 2026
Ten seasons in Pelham: how the Birmingham Bulls turned a borrowed name into a winning minor-league habit
The third team to carry the Birmingham Bulls name is now the most durable: a Southern Professional Hockey League side playing out of a 4,100-seat municipal rink in Pelham, Alabama, opening its tenth season under a head coach who has been named the league's best three times.
The Bullies, and what they left behind
The name arrived in Alabama second-hand. The World Hockey Association franchise that became the Birmingham Bulls started life as the Ottawa Nationals in 1972-73, moved to become the Toronto Toros, and was relocated south by owner John F. Bassett in 1976. It lasted five years in two leagues and generated more folklore than silverware.
Under Glen Sonmor in 1977-78 the team was the most penalised in the WHA and picked up the nickname the Birmingham Bullies, a deliberate echo of Philadelphia's Broad Street Bullies. The most-repeated night of that era came on American Thanksgiving against Cincinnati, when ten players were in the penalty box inside the first minute and Birmingham won 12-2 — the game the press filed as the Thanksgiving Day Massacre.
The following season the club swung the other way. Bassett went after teenagers, chased Wayne Gretzky unsuccessfully, and assembled the group fans called the Baby Bulls under John Brophy: Rick Vaive, Michel Goulet and Rob Ramage all passed through on their way to long NHL careers. When the WHA merged into the NHL in 1979, Birmingham was not among the clubs taken in. The team dropped into the Central Hockey League for two seasons and folded in 1981. A separate Bulls side played in the East Coast Hockey League from 1992 to 2001, after which professional hockey left the market again.
A second-hand name in a municipal rink
The current franchise exists because Art Clarkson, who had owned the ECHL team, went back for a third attempt. The SPHL approved Birmingham as an expansion club on 26 April 2017 and the team began play that autumn with Jamey Hicks, a former ECHL Bulls player, as its first head coach.
The one substantive change from the earlier eras is the building. The WHA and ECHL teams played downtown at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex; the SPHL side plays 20 miles south at the Pelham Civic Center, which opened in 1997, seats 4,100 for hockey and houses two NHL-sized sheets. It is the only public ice rink in the Birmingham area, which means the Bulls share the roof with a skating school of more than 400 pupils, the Alabama Frozen Tide and, since 2025, the junior-level Pelham Prowlers. The arrangement is unglamorous and it is also the reason the franchise has outlasted its predecessors: the overheads match the league.
Hicks moved into a consultancy role in 2020 and Craig Simchuk took the bench. Joe Stroud is club president and general manager; Kurt Dinga is governor and owner.
The trophy they won, and the ones they did not
The Bulls were competitive almost immediately. In 2018-19, their second season, they posted the league's second-best regular-season record and reached the President's Cup final, losing to in-state rivals Huntsville Havoc. In 2022-23 they did it again — second-best record, a run to the final, defeat by Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs.
The breakthrough came in 2023-24, when a 38-18 regular season delivered the William B. Coffey Trophy as league champions. No Birmingham team of any vintage had won a regular-season title before. "After 22 years in Birmingham, we finally got the goal of winning a regular season championship for our town," Stroud said when the club extended Simchuk and associate head coach Kevin Kerr — who runs player development — on multi-year deals in May 2024. The pair had won 75 of 116 games across the previous two seasons. The Coffey Trophy did not convert: Birmingham went out in the quarter-finals.
That has become the pattern. In 2024-25 the Bulls finished fourth on 69 points from a 32-19 record with five overtime and shootout losses, then lost a quarter-final series to fifth-seeded Fayetteville Marksmen. A decade in, the franchise has three deep regular seasons, two finals and no President's Cup.
Last on Christmas Day, second-best after it
The 2025-26 season was the strangest of the lot. Birmingham sat bottom of the SPHL on Christmas Day. Their leading scorer, Filimon Ledziankou, had been lost to injury on 22 November. From that point the team went 22-12-2, the second-best record in the league over the stretch, and Simchuk reached his 150th career regular-season win on 19 January 2026.
The recovery was enough to reach the play-offs but not to change the ending. Birmingham finished sixth with 28 wins and 63 points, and Roanoke swept them out of the quarter-finals. Evansville Thunderbolts took the President's Cup, beating regular-season champions Peoria in the final.
On 21 April 2026 the league named Simchuk Coach of the Year for the salvage job — his third such award, following one for the 2022-23 campaign. On 30 June 2026 the club put him on another multi-year contract. "Craig has proven that he is the right leader for our hockey operations," Dinga said; Simchuk's reply was that he was "grateful to the ownership group for their confidence".
Season ten, in a bigger league
The 2026-27 campaign, the SPHL's 23rd, is the Bulls' tenth since the 2017 return and the first in a 12-team league. Athens Rock Lobsters and Pee Dee Icecats have both come across from the Federal Prospects Hockey League; Mobile Mysticks are confirmed for 2027-28, which will give Alabama three SPHL clubs.
The league has also changed how games are scored. Regulation wins are now worth three points, overtime and shootout wins two, and overtime and shootout losses one. Overtime has been cut to a seven-minute three-on-three period, quarter-finals have been extended to best-of-five, and coaches can now challenge calls in buildings with replay facilities.
Birmingham's fixture list, published at the start of August 2026, leans heavily on short trips: ten meetings with Pensacola Ice Flyers, seven with Knoxville Ice Bears, six with Huntsville Havoc. The home season opened on Friday 16 October 2026 against Pensacola and runs through to early April 2027, with games on Halloween, Black Friday, Boxing Day, Martin Luther King Day and Presidents' Day, three straight at Quad City over New Year, and the first sight of Athens on 30 October. Only one home date falls on a Thursday. The roster was still being filled out through the autumn, with Matt Wiesner, Jordan Gagnon, Logan Dapprich and Ashton Paul among the additions announced by the club.
The show, now
A Bulls night at the Pelham Civic Center is a standard three-period professional hockey game — 60 minutes of play, two intermissions, typically a little over two hours — with a 7pm face-off on almost every date and the vast majority of home games falling on Fridays and Saturdays. Overtime, under the rules introduced for 2026-27, is a single seven-minute three-on-three period before a shootout, and coaches can now challenge calls where the building supports replay. The room is small and usually close to two-thirds full: the club averaged 3,465 in a 4,100-seat arena across 28 home dates in 2024-25. What distinguishes the calendar is how much is bolted onto the hockey. The promotional schedule released on 21 September 2026 gives almost every home date a theme: a small dog race on 23 October, First Responder Night on 30 October, Health Care Night on 6 November, an Auburn-versus-Alabama alumni game on 21 November, adult jersey giveaways on 27 November and 19 March, a Teddy Bear Toss on 13 December, Princess Day on 27 December, an Eli Gold bobblehead on 9 January, Star Wars Night on 23 January, Hawaiian shirt night on 30 January, weiner dog racing on 13 February and Teacher Appreciation on 12 March, with the season's last promotion a Children's Hospital night on 3 April 2027. The loudest fixtures are the regional ones — Huntsville Havoc, who beat Birmingham in the 2019 President's Cup final, visit as part of six meetings this season, and Pensacola Ice Flyers are on the schedule ten times.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · oursportscentral.com · oursportscentral.com · oursportscentral.com · abc3340.com · wbrc.com · en.wikipedia.org
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