Professional hockey is coming back to Greensboro in the fall of 2025, and one of the steps in the process needed to make that happen was for the Guilford County Board of Commissioners to vote to approve money to upfit the Greensboro Coliseum so that it will be a fitting place for the coming hockey team to play their games in the East Coast League.

Though it won’t be an NHL team, it will be very high-quality hockey; and, in the past, Greensboro residents have shown solid support for pro hockey in the city.

According to a discussion at the Guilford County Board of Commissioners regular meeting on Thursday, Nov. 7, the hockey team doesn’t have a name yet.

That will be decided by a contest held in the future, which will allow area residents to take a shot at naming the team. (It’s not known what the winner will get in return.)

Guilford County Commissioner Pat Tillman, who’s a big hockey fan, said at the meeting that he wanted area leaders to explore the possibility of building a new stand-alone ice rink and hockey facility where the team could play its games.

 He said it could be used for other ice-rink related uses as well.

“I’m very interested in getting people together and seeing how we can do that.  That’s the first step – getting with the city and the county and coliseum and the visitor’s convention bureau.  We have one rink and it’s booked up all the time and just think about how we could grow the sport here.”

“Then we could draw people in and go after that hockey tournament – that’s good money,” he said. “You’d have people flying in and driving in from wherever.”

Guilford County and Greensboro already make a fortune on youth soccer tournaments.

When games or special events were not at the rink, Tillman said, it could be used by the public

“So, it kind of achieves a lot of things,” he said.

 “It could be just public ice where kids could go and not have to pay these expensive prices,” he added.

Tillman said that currently the only rink in the city is the Greensboro Ice House and he said it can be pricey to use and also said that facility stays swamped because it’s the only rink in town.

 Hockey is growing in popularity and the Carolina Hurricanes are just down the road in Raleigh.

“A lot of people can’t afford it,” Tillman said.

The ultimate pipe dream, of course, is for Greensboro to get a pro sports establishment. The closest this area ever came to getting top-tier professional sports was about a quarter of a century ago when baseball fan Mike Solomon tried to lure an MLB team in Greensboro.  After a lot of discussion Triad voters struck down a proposal to bring Major League Baseball to the state.

  At that time, people didn’t want to shell out money for a Major League Baseball Stadium.

But Greensboro is a much bigger city now and has made tremendous strides when it comes to growth and drawing world-renowned businesses.

So local leaders can dream.

For now, the incoming East Coast League team will be playing at the Greensboro Coliseum on the ice underneath the basketball floor.  That’s not ideal because every time there’s an ice event the floor must be pulled up and, sometimes, if the basketball floor isn’t put back on correctly, there are games where the players slip often on the condensation that forms on the boards.

Also, it’s quite an effort to change the Coliseum from a basketball court to an ice rink and then, say, back to a floor for a Taylor Swift concert.

For the new hockey team to use the colisuem, some remodeling and the purchase of needed equipment was needed.

The Greensboro/Guilford County Tourism Development Authority had already approved the use of $1.5 million in City Capital for the project at that board’s October 8 meeting.  The money comes from the occupancy tax and similar funds paid by those using hotels and other short-term lodging in Guilford County.

However, the county commissioners had to approve the expenditure for the project to move forward.

Here’s a breakdown of the cost (none of which will be county government money:

  • $800,000 expenditure for the “hockey system” – that is, new aluminum hockey rink boards, gates, railing, acrylic hockey glass and posts, safety netting, team benches and penalty boxes, goals, and storage carts that meet or exceed National Hockey League standards
  • $100,000 for the office build-out for restrooms
  • $300,000 for seating platforms that rise gradually to allow clear lines of sight for fans.
  • $300,000 to purchase one new Zamboni and the conversion of an old Zamboni for more modern use.

By law, the approval of the expenditures must be a joint decision of the Greensboro City Council, the Guilford County commissioners and the Greensboro/Guilford County Tourism Development Authority, which is why the Board of Commissioners had to give a vote of approval Thursday night even though no new county money was involved.

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