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The profile · researched 6 October 2026
Huntsville Havoc: three banners, a sold-out barn and a new managing partner
Alabama's longest-running minor-league hockey club has become the Southern Professional Hockey League's attendance benchmark, selling out every home date of 2024-25. Twenty-two seasons after its founding, it has new controlling owners and a 60-game schedule starting on 16 October 2026.
Built to replace a dead team
Hockey in Huntsville had already failed once before the Havoc existed. The Huntsville Channel Cats had come and gone, and the new club was assembled to fill the ice at the Von Braun Center for the 2004-05 campaign, the first season of the Southern Professional Hockey League. Keith and Becky Jeffries founded it and owned it outright. John Gibson coached the first four seasons, Eric Soltys the fifth.
Randy Murphy arrived in 2009 and won a title in his first year. In 2009-10 the Havoc swept the Mississippi Surge, that season's regular-season champion, three games to none for the franchise's first President's Cup. The crowds then were nothing like the present ones: home averages across the club's early decades sat between roughly 2,100 and 4,900, in a building that opened in 1975 and holds about 6,600 for hockey.
Two Cups in two years, then a five-season wait
The second title came in 2017-18 from the fourth seed, beating Peoria two games to one, and the club repeated the following spring by sweeping the Birmingham Bulls two games to none, the third back-to-back champion in league history. That 2018-19 side remains the best regular-season team the franchise has fielded: 36 wins, 17 losses, three overtime losses, 75 points. Sy Nutkevitch, who played in Huntsville from 2016 to 2023, holds the career marks with 115 goals and 371 points.
Then came five seasons without a final. Stuart Stefan, who had played for the Havoc from 2011 to 2018, took over as head coach for 2023-24 and went 35-22, reaching the President's Cup Finals for the first time since 2019. Peoria rallied from a game down to win the series, closing it out 5-1 at home in game three, with Alex Kielczewski scoring Huntsville's only goal.
The sellout era
The more durable story of the past three years is the gate. The 2024-25 season ended with every home date sold out, regular season and playoffs, the first fully sold-out season in club history and part of a run of 46 consecutive sellouts dating back to 26 December 2023. Home attendance averaged 6,247 across 28 dates. The side went 36-15-5 and 19-7-2 at home, Buster Larsson, Austin Alger and Charlie Risk all made the All-SPHL Second Team, and the specialty-jersey auctions and theme nights raised more than $273,000.
It did not convert. Evansville, seeded seventh, knocked Huntsville out in the first round of the 2025 playoffs and went on to win the President's Cup. Stefan's summary of the season, published on 21 April 2025, dwelt on the building rather than the result: "This city shows up like no other."
Second again, swept again
The 2025-26 season followed the same shape. Huntsville finished 32-20-5 for 70 points, second in the league behind Peoria's 79, with 179 goals scored and 146 conceded, and closed the regular season by winning eight of its last ten. Knoxville then swept the first-round series, clinching 4-2 at a sold-out Von Braun Center on 11 April 2026 and ending the push for a fourth banner. Evansville repeated as champion, coming back from two games down to win the decider 6-4 in Peoria.
Stefan and assistant coach Tyler Piacentini published a 13-man protected list on 22 May 2026 — seven forwards, four defencemen, two goaltenders — headed by Alger, an All-SPHL Second Team selection, and the defenceman Kevin Weaver-Vitale, who had made the All-SPHL Rookie Team. Gio Procopio re-signed on 25 July 2026 after a 58-game season of 12 goals and 22 assists; he wears an alternate captain's A following the retirement of his brother Dom, and has taken 179 penalty minutes in two years with the club. Stefan described him as a physical presence who had grown into a leader. Further additions through the summer included the defencemen Brody Tallman and Samuel Frederick and the forwards Lucas Piekarczyk, Keighan Gerrie, James Eng, Landry Schmuck and Brayden Stannard, the last of those arriving from two seasons at Knoxville.
A new managing partner, the same front office
On 3 September 2026 the club announced that Zawyer Sports & Entertainment, based in Jacksonville, Florida, had acquired a controlling interest. Keith and Becky Jeffries, who had owned the Havoc since its founding in 2004, remain the largest minority partner. The transaction was approved by the SPHL Board of Governors at its annual meeting; no purchase price was disclosed and no arena works were announced. Day-to-day business operations and the existing front-office staff were explicitly left intact.
Zawyer's other holdings are a reasonable guide to what it brings: the ECHL's Jacksonville Icemen, Greensboro Gargoyles and Savannah Ghost Pirates, the AHL's Charlotte Checkers, the SPHL's Mobile Mysticks and, in baseball, the Gastonia Ghost Peppers. Chief executive Andy Kaufmann framed the purchase as building on an existing foundation rather than remaking it; Jeffries said the time was right to bring in a managing partner who could take the club into its next chapter. Steve Maples, chief executive of the Von Braun Center, welcomed the arrangement. Single-game tickets for the new season went on sale on 9 September.
Sixty games, two new opponents
The 2026-27 schedule, released on 30 July 2026, runs to 60 games, up from 58 the previous year. The season opens on the road at Pee Dee on 16 October at 19:15, with a preseason fixture against Pensacola on 9 October beforehand. The home opener is 23 October against Pensacola at 19:00, the first of 30 dates at Propst Arena, and the regular season closes on 3 April 2027.
Two expansion clubs reshape the calendar: Athens appears seven times and Pee Dee three, ten games against teams that did not exist in the league last season. Evansville, the back-to-back champion, is the most frequent opponent at eight games, with Pensacola on seven, Birmingham, Knoxville, Macon and Quad City on six each, Fayetteville five, Peoria four and Roanoke only twice. The in-state Battle for Bama meetings with Birmingham fall on 20 December, 26 and 27 December, 18 January, and 15 and 21 February.
The show, now
A night at Propst Arena runs about two and a half hours: three 20-minute periods, two intermissions, and a presentation built around the breaks rather than squeezed into them. The pregame sequence is a light show and hype video during player introductions, with arriving fans invited to scan a QR code to make their phones part of it. Intermissions bring shooting and skating contests, costumed races across the ice and rides on the fanboni. Tickets start at around $20 and city-owned parking is roughly $5; concessions are the standard hot dogs, nachos, burgers and pizza, with Alabama beers including Yellowhammer, Blue Pants, Below the Radar and Rocket Republic, and ice-level seats get table service from ushers, which is unusual at this level. Reviewers describe a 1975 building with a more contemporary production than its age suggests, good sightlines from all three tiers, and a crowd that knows the game. The crowd is the point: every home date of 2024-25 sold out, part of a 46-game sellout run beginning on 26 December 2023, and the first-round elimination by Knoxville on 11 April 2026 was played to a full house. Theme nights carry specialty jerseys that go to auction, raising more than $273,000 in 2024-25. There are no support acts in the music sense; the warm-up is the opponent, and in 2026-27 that means Birmingham six times in the Battle for Bama and eight meetings with the reigning champion, Evansville.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · thesphl.com · en.wikipedia.org · waff.com · waff.com · huntsvillehavoc.com · huntsvillebusinessjournal.com · huntsvillehavoc.com
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