Manchester Storm

The arena team of the nineties

Manchester Storm were built for a building. Ogden Entertainment and arena director Lee Esckilsen set the club up in 1995 as the tenant of the newly opened NYNEX Arena, and it worked from the start. In their first season, 1995–96, the Storm won British Hockey League Division One in front of average crowds of 6,342, then became a founder member of the Ice Hockey Superleague in 1996.

The crowds were the story. On 23 February 1997 a match against Sheffield Steelers drew 17,245 people, a British league record that still stands and, at the time, a European record too. On the ice, John Lawless coached the first two seasons before Kurt Kleinendorst arrived in 1997 and rebuilt the roster with a dozen new players. The Superleague title followed in 1998–99, and the Benson and Hedges Cup, the old Autumn Cup, in 1999–2000. Terry Christensen and Daryl Lipsey took the bench in the two seasons after that.

The money ran out quickly. Costs outstripped ticket and sponsorship income, sponsors left once Sky withdrew its television coverage, and arena management under SMG did not want ice hockey to continue. The club went into receivership and folded during the 2002–03 season. Supporters who had rallied round the Storm founded Manchester Phoenix the following season, and that club carried the city's hockey for the next decade.

The Altrincham years

The current Storm date from 2015. Hull Stingrays withdrew from the Elite Ice Hockey League that summer, and at the same time a legal dispute between Manchester Phoenix's management and the operators of the Altrincham rink over alleged financial impropriety left Planet Ice Altrincham without a top-flight team. A revived Storm filled the gap, opening on 5 September 2015 with an 8–1 win over Edinburgh Capitals. On 7 February 2016 they beat the same opponents 13–9, still the highest-scoring league game on record.

Omar Pacha was player-coach for the first two seasons before Ryan Finnerty took over in 2017. His first campaign, 2017–18, remains the club's best regular season: 35 wins, 16 losses and five overtime defeats for 75 points, second place, and the Patton Conference title. The team lost in the play-off quarter-finals, but the rink was selling out more games than the previous two seasons combined, including the last five of the year.

Finnerty coached until 2022 and is now general manager and part of the ownership group, which has passed from founder Mark Johnson through Jamie Tunstall and Gordon Greig. Matt Ginn, a former Storm goaltender, coached from 2022 to 2024 and was named EIHL Coach of the Year for 2023–24, with play-off appearances in both seasons. Mike Flanagan replaced him in 2024 and was relieved of his duties on 3 December 2024. Cameron Critchlow, another former player, was appointed the club's fifth permanent head coach.

Mike Hammond, the forward who defined the Finnerty years, still holds the club records for goals, assists and points.

A semi-final, then a stand-off

Critchlow's first full season was the strongest since 2018. Storm finished 2025–26 with 26 wins, 19 losses and nine overtime defeats for 61 points and sixth place, and for the first time since the 2015 relaunch they reached the EIHL Playoff Weekend, going out at the semi-final stage.

Off the ice the spring was messier. The club had not put 2026–27 season tickets on sale, and rumours of talks with the AO Arena would not go away. On 21 April 2026 Planet Ice asked the club to confirm its intentions in writing. In a statement dated 24 April, the rink said it had received no reply until 16:47 that day and, even then, no indication of whether the team was relocating. Citing the position its staff had been left in with supporters, and its own need to plan, Planet Ice declined to issue a licence for Storm to play at Altrincham in 2026–27. The statement noted the club had originally committed to staying at the rink until a planned TraffordCity arena opened.

Four days later, on 28 April 2026, the AO Arena confirmed the move. The club described it as a major milestone for its partnership group and a vision it had worked towards for some time, adding that its ambition was not just to compete but to lead. Gemma Vaughan, the arena's general manager, said the homecoming would bring new energy to the city centre, and the league's Mark Brooks said the move reflected the ambition of the team and the growth of the competition. Critchlow was re-signed as head coach in the same period.

Homecoming: 6 September 2026

The first game back was a pre-season friendly against Sheffield Steelers, the same opponents as the 1997 record night, at 16:00 on Sunday 6 September 2026. BBC Sport's preview two days earlier said the club expected a bumper crowd and possibly a record for any Elite League fixture. Goaltender Drew DeRidder told the BBC it was going to be incredible and would make all the difference in the world.

It did set the record. The Manc reported a crowd of around 11,000, the biggest ever for a match between two Elite League clubs, and a game that finished 5–5 before Sheffield took it in the shootout, which the club's own report logs as a 5–6 defeat. Vaughan said welcoming Storm back after more than twenty years in front of a record league crowd was incredibly special. The club's headlines the same weekend recorded Mike Morin returning behind the bench for one final time, and on 7 September it published a letter to supporters responding to feedback from the night.

The 23,000-capacity building will host around 35 Storm games a season, according to The Manc. Competitive hockey starts with Challenge Cup games against Nottingham Panthers on 12 and 13 September, away and then home, followed by Cardiff Devils and Coventry Blaze on 18 and 19 September. The first league game at the arena is against Glasgow Clan on 23 September, with a trip to Nottingham three days later.

What a Storm game is like now

An Elite League game runs to three 20-minute periods with two intervals, and Storm's match-day at the AO Arena is built around them. For the homecoming the club opened a Fan Zone at 14:30, ninety minutes before face-off, with live entertainment, interviews with players and coaches and special guests, and kept it open for an hour after the final buzzer. The club's own framing of the move is blunt: its site says people claimed ice hockey could not fill big arenas, and asks supporters to prove them wrong.

The Manc found supporters travelling in from across Manchester and beyond, with much of the social-media reaction focused on the play itself; one fan's TikTok from the game celebrated a big hit from a Storm defenceman. The paper reported no complaints about queues, facilities or the ice. For a decade the team's home was the rink supporters called the Storm Shelter in Altrincham, close and loud but small; the arena era trades that intimacy for scale, and the first night suggests the crowd has come with them.

How the team fares on the ice is the open question. A sixth-place finish and a play-off semi-final in 2025–26 is the base, Critchlow and DeRidder are back, and the club now has a building whose history it is measured against every time Sheffield visit.