Ice Hockey
Pennsylvania is home to more professional ice hockey teams than any other U.S. state, except New York. In all, seven professional hockey teams call Pennsylvania home: the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League; the Hershey Bears and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins of the American Hockey League; the Reading Royals of the ECHL; and the Indiana Ice Miners of the Mid-Atlantic Hockey League. The Hershey Bears are the oldest existing AHL franchise, joining the league in 1938. The Erie Otters of the junior Ontario Hockey League also play in Pennsylvania. The Otters are one of only three OHL teams located outside of Canada.
Due in large part to Pennsylvania's cold winter climate and the state's geographic location in the Northeast, hockey is fairly popular throughout the state.
A number of notable current and former professional hockey players are Pennsylvania natives: Mike Richter, one of the most successful American-born goaltenders in NHL history; Pete Babando; Bob Beers; Jay Caufield; Ryan Malone; Gerry O'Flaherty; George Parros; Jesse Spring; and R.J. Umberger. Legendary amateur hockey player Hobey Baker, namesake of U.S. college hockey's Hobey Baker Memorial Award, was also born in Pennsylvania.
Read more about this topic: Sports In Pennsylvania
Famous quotes containing the word ice:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)