Formation
The team was initially owned by Barry Dow, an American who already owned the Basketball team Guildford Kings, he owned the team along with Bill Hurley and the two were both new to the sport of ice hockey. The owners brought in Mike Urquhart as Coach and Darrin Zinger as captain.
Key players signed for the first season included Canadians Sean Murphy and Dave McGahan who had been transferred due to their high scoring at Solent Vikings. In addition a number of British players including Goaltender Mike Kellond, Forward Danny O'Hanlon and Defender Gary Shearer.
When 23 January 1993 finally arrived and the Guildford Spectrum opened, the event was a big one. Local newspaper the Surrey Advertiser described the local council's £28million arena as "Awesome". Guildford's first game at their new home showing a convincing win with Andy Sparks scoring the first goal at the Spectrum. The team went to the top of the Conference due to that game, a position they were in for the whole season.
Unfortunately in their first season many of the defence men and Goaltender Kellond ran into injury problems, these were poorly timed occurring just before the start of the play-offs; however despite this Guildford still managed to gain a promotion for the following season.
The team was very popular in their first season, with the average attendance being over 2000 (capacity was 2200); and because of this positive reaction the team attracted local insurance company Cornhill as a sponsor along with Pepsi Cola as the shirt sponsor; the latter prompting a temporary name change to the Pepsi Guildford Flames between February and November 1993.
Read more about this topic: Guildford Flames
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