Atlanta Flames

1972/73-1979/80

First Game Played October 7, 1972
Last Game Played April 12, 1980
Moved to Calgary in 1980

The Flames history begins in 1968, when businessman Tom Cousins and former Georgia governor Carl Sanders brought the third major professional sports franchise to the city, buying the NBA's St. Louis Hawks and moving them to Atlanta.

The Hawks were in need of a venue suitable for professional sports. As a result one was built for, the Omni Coliseum. This new facility, owned by Cousins and the Omni Sports Group, was the crux of the expansion bid made to the National Hockey League for a new hockey franchise.

It was announced in November 1971, nine months after the Omni's construction was complete, that hockey was headed to the South: the NHL granted an expansion franchise to Cousins' group for the 1972–73 NHL season. The NHL had not initially proposed an expansion for 1972, but elected to award a franchise to Long Island (the New York Islanders) to keep the upstart World Hockey Association out of the newly-built Nassau Coliseum. Needing another team to balance the schedule, the NHL awarded a team to Atlanta.

When it was first announced that Atlanta would have an NHL franchise many hockey observers thought that a team based in the southern US was a foolish move, especially since the talent pool had been diluted by repeated expansion and the upstart WHA. Nevertheless, the team quickly began front office operations, naming young Blues assistant general manager Cliff Fletcher as general manager. Soon after, Fletcher had found the team its first coach: former Canadiens star forward Bernie "Boom-Boom" Geoffrion.

Named after the famous fire of Atlanta started by General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1864 destroying the key southern city of Atlanta, which was considered the beginning of the end of the Civil War.


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Atlanta Knights

For four seasons, the city of Atlanta was represented by the Atlanta Knights of the International Hockey League in 1992 as the top farm team of the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning. Bringing professional hockey back to Atlanta after an 11-year absence, the Knights created a new generation of hockey fans in the South, paving the way for the NHL's return in 1999.

The four Knights seasons, starting in 1992-93 and concluding tumultuously in 1995-96, were highlighted by the Knights winning the 1994 Turner Cup championship in only their second season of existence.

They won the Turner Cup in the 1993–94 season. The Knights featured the first professional African-American head coach in John Paris Jr.. The Knights were also one of the first professional teams to play a female goalie, Manon Rheaume, in a regular-season game.

The Olympics were coming to Atlanta for the Summer of 1996, and the city was abuzz with new plans for new arenas, new sporting palaces, and for once, there was money to fund all these grand schemes. And the Knights made no secret of it: They wanted a piece of the pie.

Forces bigger than the Knights, though, had taken note of the hockey renaissance the IHL team had fostered in Atlanta, and with the NHL set to expand itself to 30 teams over five years, it seemed only natural that in the time it would take to build a new hockey arena, a new NHL franchise would rise in Atlanta to fill it.

To make way for the new arena, the Omni would be razed. That left the Knights in a precarious position, and team management delivered an ultimatum to the office of then-Mayor Bill Campbell: Give us a voice in the new arena plans, or the Knights would bolt. The city did not act on the Knights ultimatum, although Campbell's office professed to be stunned. More cynical observers would have said that the Knights management simply wanted to be able to go ahead with life after the Omni wherever it would take them, and Campbell wanted them out of the way quietly to appease the eventual owners of the new NHL franchise.

The Knights franchise relocated to Quebec City.