Long Beach Ice Dogs

The Long Beach Ice Dogs were an American professional ice hockey team based in

In the summer of 2006, Kemp sold the Ice Dogs to a new investment group led by Chicago businessman Ted Foxman and the Los Angeles-based brothers, attorney Steven Bash and physician Isaac Bash, M.D.[1] The new ownership group had plans to keep the team in Long Beach. The future of the team there had been uncertain because the Ice Dogs typically had the lowest average attendance in the ECHL. The new owners also planned to promote boxing cards at the Long Beach Arena.

On October 20, 2006, the Ice Dogs reached an affiliate agreement with the NHL's Boston Bruins.^[2]

Suspension of operations

On April 20, 2007, the ECHL announced the suspension of the team's operations, citing that Foxman had informed the board that the Ice Dogs would not play in Long Beach Arena in 2007–08. The ECHL added that the team's status would be clarified at the league's next meetings in June.^[3]

Team co-owner Steven Bash told the Press-Telegram that the team was losing too much money for it to continue operations. Bash added that the Ice Dogs were negotiating a

On June 18, 2007, during the ECHL Board of Governors Annual Meeting, the Ice Dogs membership in the ECHL was immediately terminated due to the Long Beach ownership group being unable to continue to operate in 2007–08.[5]

Meanwhile, former owner Barry Kemp, after originally being awarded a new franchise for Ontario, California, during the merger of the WCHL and ECHL^[6] that eventually became the Phoenix RoadRunners in 2005,^[7] relocated one of his other teams in 2008 to Ontario as the Ontario Reign.^[8][9]

Notes

• Mark Hardy, Jaroslav Halak, Dan Lambert, Domenic Pittis, Patrik Stefan, and Patrik Augusta
  also spent some time with the Long Beach Ice Dogs.
• At the time the team folded, it was the ECHL affiliate of the Boston Bruins of the NHL, after spending the previous several years as an affiliate of both the Montreal Canadiens, Dallas Stars, Anaheim Ducks and Los Angeles Kings.
• For two seasons the concrete beneath the ice at the
  Long Beach Arena was a light blue color, stemming from a previous sponsorship with the airline JetBlue
  . Because of this the blue lines on the ice were actually painted yellow, but were also marked by blue lines on the dasher boards. In addition, the creases in front of the goals were white instead of the typical light blue, since the rest of the rink was light blue. After the airline left as a sponsor team officials decided to leave the ice blue because it reflected less light than the normal white concrete during television broadcasts. The arena's ice has since been returned to the typical white color.