European Ice Hockey Super League Key Chain
Middle Spins
London Knights was an English ice hockey team based in London. They played in the UK's Ice Hockey Superleague between September 1998 and April 2003.
The Knights were founded in 1998 by Anschutz Entertainment Group in the hope of being able to partake in the British ice hockey boom of the 1990s, when teams like Manchester Storm and Sheffield Steelers drew in large crowds of up to 8000 on average and up to 17,000 in single games. Anschutz hoped that a London-based team would help raise the awareness of the sport not only in London, but in the whole of the UK. Furthermore, the team was founded in order to help make the financially struggling London Arena (which was co-owned by Anschutz and SMG) more profitable.
The Knights enjoyed some success in their brief existence. They won the British Super League playoffs in 2000, thus becoming British league champion, but their biggest success was reaching the final of the Continental Cup in 2001, becoming the first British team to do so and being the most successful British team in the history of the tournament until it was won by the Nottingham Panthers in 2017. They beat HC Slovan Bratislava 5:2 and the Munich Barons 4:1, but lost to the ZSC Lions 0:1.
They were coached by Jim Fuyarchuk, Chris McSorley, Bob Leslie and Jim Brithén. McSorley would later go on to coach Great Britain and work as assistant coach to Team Canada. His brother Marty McSorley, then of the Boston Bruins, was almost signed by the Knights while serving a 100-game ban in the NHL.
In 2003, the team's arena, the London Arena, was sold, and the team were left homeless. There were hopes they would find a temporary home for two years before moving to the O2 Arena in 2005,[4] but when the Superleague folded after the 2002–03 season, the team announced that it would "not be icing" in the following season, and never returned.