Ice Hockey team

Niagara IceDogs

Club · Canada · OHL

«IceDogs»

376 Matches

126 wins

249 losses

1187–1690 Goals

−503 Difference

3.2 Scored per game

Form L W W L W W

Junior hockey in the Greater Toronto Area needed a team that could draw on its own name, and in 1998 the IceDogs took the ice in Mississauga as an Ontario Hockey League expansion side. The franchise lasted there nine seasons before the league sent it looking for a new home, and in 2007 it moved down to St. Catharines, keeping the name and colours but becoming, from that point, the Niagara IceDogs.

The Mississauga years were not wasted ones: that version of the club won the Emms Trophy in 2004–05 and the Bobby Orr Trophy the season before, reaching the J. Ross Robertson Cup final in 2003–04 only to lose to the Guelph Storm. Niagara has since matched that pattern rather than broken it — Central Division and Eastern Conference titles in 2011–12 and again later in the decade, and a second run to the league final in 2011–12, where the London Knights beat them. A third finals appearance, in 2015–16, ended the same way it always has for this franchise: a conference championship banner, no league one.

What the organisation has produced instead is players who left before any of that silverware mattered to them. Alex Pietrangelo went fourth overall in 2008 out of the Mississauga side, and Ryan Strome and Dougie Hamilton followed a few years later as top-ten picks once the club had settled in Niagara. Andrew Shaw took a different route out of the same dressing room, grinding his way to two Stanley Cups without ever having been drafted particularly high.

The rivalry marketed hardest at the Meridian Centre is the "Battle of the Dogs" against Brantford, though the older grudge, against Ottawa, dates to a conference final the club lost. The J. Ross Robertson Cup itself, the one trophy that would separate this franchise from its long list of near misses, has eluded both versions of the IceDogs since 1998.

Latest results

Fixtures and results

11 Oct	OHL	Barrie Colts H	4:2	W
9 Oct	OHL	Ottawa 67s H	2:1	W
3 Oct	OHL	Sudbury Wolves A	1:7	L
2 Oct	OHL	Barrie Colts A	2:1	W
27 Sep	OHL	Flint Firebirds A	5:2	W
26 Sep	OHL	Saginaw Spirit A	3:5	L