Milano Hockey Club

A club that was a piece of paper in April

Milano Hockey Club was formally registered on 7 April 2026 and affiliated to the Italian federation a week later, on 14 April. On 1 June the ICE Hockey League granted it a franchise and admitted it for 2026-27 as the competition's fourteenth club, alongside sides from Austria, Italy, Slovenia and Hungary. Eighteen weeks after that approval the team played a league match. Nothing about the project was set up as a slow rebuild: the summer recruitment brief was to be competitive immediately, and the squad reflects it.

It is a new legal entity. There is no inherited licence and no continuity of ownership with anything that went before. What it has taken from the city is the red and blue of the old rossoblù sides and a claim on a hockey history in Milan that runs back to 1924.

What Milan lost between 2008 and 2023

Clubs from the city won 32 Italian championships between 1925 and 2006, a total that matches the combined league hauls of Milan's two football clubs. The strongest of them was the Saima side of the 1990s. None of that survived into the present decade.

Milano Vipers disbanded in 2008 and Hockey Milano Rossoblu took their place, winning Serie A2 in 2012, stepping up to the top flight, and joining the Alps Hockey League in 2018 after Neumarkt-Egna withdrew. In 2011 the organisation announced a partnership with the KHL and an intention to play at that level; the rink and the money were never there, and the plan died. The Rossoblu operation, by then running as the Milano Bears, withdrew its first team in 2022 because the costs could not be carried, and disbanded after the 2021-22 Italian Hockey League season. The Agorà, the 4,000-seat rink they had used, closed in 2023. From that point Italy's largest city had neither a senior professional team nor a building capable of housing one.

The pattern is consistent enough to be the defining fact about hockey in Milan: the teams kept failing at the same point, which was the arena.

Dogecoin money, a rink builder and a Canadian coach

The principal investor is House of Doge, the corporate entity of the Dogecoin Foundation, which announced the franchise approval on 2 June 2026. Its chief executive, Marco Margiotta, said at the time: "Milan has always deserved a club at this level. The hockey history is there. The passion is there." House of Doge also holds stakes in HC Sierre, who won the Swiss League in April 2025, their first title since 1967, and in US Triestina Calcio 1918; its merger partner is the Nasdaq-listed Brag House Holdings.

The club president is Christof Leitner, whose business is the construction of ice rinks — a pointed appointment given what has repeatedly sunk the sport in the city. Chris McSorley is general manager and Viktor Szélig sporting director. Doug Shedden, a Canadian previously in charge at Bolzano, is head coach, assisted by Pekka Kangasalusta, with Sakari Lindfors working with the goaltenders.

The roster leans on players who already know the league or have played above it. Scott Valentine, a Canadian defenceman wearing 22, is captain, with Alex Grant alongside him. Greg McKegg arrives with 251 NHL games behind him and Michael Dal Colle with 110. Nick Saracino and Lucas Chiodo supply the Italian core. In goal, Jacob Smith, a 31-year-old Italo-Canadian with previous ICEHL seasons, is first choice, backed by 21-year-old Edoardo Berti, signed from Sierre. The group first trained together at a camp in Innsbruck from 18 to 20 August, beat Asiago 5-2 on 5 September, and took a 5-4 win over Vienna Capitals at the WellCard Trophy in Klagenfurt, its first result against an ICEHL club.

Seven million euros and a roof over Rho

The Fiera Ice Arena stands on Viale degli Alberghi, beside the Porta Sud entrance of the Rho Fieramilano exhibition district. It seats 4,000 and cost €7 million, funded entirely by Fondazione Fiera Milano. It is a temporary tensile structure, raised between July and October 2026: shell and roof were complete in early September, with barriers, the refrigeration plant and the services fitted out through the rest of the month. The squad walked the site on 8 September. Inside there are eight dressing rooms of roughly 30 square metres each, 44 public showers, 34 toilets and heated concourse areas.

Fondazione Fiera Milano presents the building as legacy work from Milano Cortina 2026. Its president, Giovanni Bozzetti, framed it as a way to "mantenere viva la fiamma olimpica" — keep the Olympic flame alive — and the stated plan is to transfer most of the structure and its technology into a future permanent ice palace, or reuse it within the fairground. That is the honest description of the club's home: a demountable building with a defined second life rather than a stadium, which is more than Milan has had since 2023 and less than the project eventually needs.

Five matches, twelve points, no home ice

The season opened on 19 September 2026 at the Tiwag Arena in Innsbruck, where Milano won 3-1. A 4-0 win over Linz followed on 21 September and a 5-4 win over Pioneers Vorarlberg on 23 September. The first defeat came in Budapest on 25 September, 0-3. None of the five opening fixtures was played in Milan; the rink was still being finished.

The best of them came the following night, 26 September, at the Vienna Capitals, in front of 4,920 spectators. Milano scored three times in the first period, twice on the power play: Giordano Finoro in the seventh minute, Michael Dal Colle in the eleventh from a Greg McKegg pass, and Nick Caamano thirteen seconds later on the counter. Shane Gersich and Scott Kosmachuk pulled Vienna back to 3-2 inside three minutes of the second period, before Lucas Chiodo restored the three-goal lead in the 37th, Samuel Houde scored in the 43rd and Dal Colle added an empty-netter in the 58th for 6-2. Berti kept goal on the eve of his 22nd birthday. It was Vienna's second defeat inside 24 hours and left them eighth.

That left Milano 4-1-0 after five games, on twelve points, second behind Klagenfurt. The schedule immediately hardens: KAC away on 30 September at the Heidi Horten Arena at 19:15, then Villach and Salzburg, before the team finally plays in its own city.

Twenty-six home dates and a curva that formed before the team did

The season-ticket campaign, INSIEME!, sells through Ticketmaster and covers all 26 regular-season home games at the Fiera Ice Arena across seven tiers. The standing fan zone, Curva NH rows A to F, costs €290, a little over €11 a match; seated rows H to M are €350, the Fiera section €450, bronze, silver and gold €650, €750 and €900, and the VIP Gold package €3,000. Play-off matches are excluded, though season-ticket holders keep seat priority and a reduced price for them.

Single-match tickets went on sale on 28 September 2026 from €20, with reductions for under-18s, over-60s and students up to 25. Children under eight enter free without a reserved seat, and groups get 5 per cent off for 10 to 15 people and 10 per cent above that.

The supporters' group, Milano Crew, was formed to follow the new club and turned out before the club had a rink: more than 200 at the Asiago friendly on 5 September and around 100 in the away end at Innsbruck on 19 September, having gathered beforehand at the Darsena. Their first home night is Friday 9 October at 19:45 against Innsbruck again, followed two days later, on Sunday 11 October at 17:00, by HC Bolzano Alto Adige Alperia — the nearest thing to a derby the fixture list offers.