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By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

PELHAM – When you think of hockey in the Birmingham area, chances are you think of the Birmingham Bulls or the University of Alabama’s club hockey teams. Now, there’s a new team aiming to be the missing piece to help players reach those big-name clubs.

The Pelham Prowlers have officially started their first season as a junior hockey team at the Pelham Civic Complex and Ice Arena, and the team is excited to develop players for the next level while attracting fans from around central Alabama.

“The sky’s the limit, and we’re just here to help these kids move up,” Prowlers co-owner Walt Stafford said. “That’s our whole reason for being here is to help promote these kids and keep moving them to achieve their dreams.”

Owners Walt and Julie Stafford have already been deeply involved in Pelham hockey for years. The Stafford family has lived in Alabaster since 1999, and one of their twin sons Alexander has played hockey since he was six years old at the PCCIA.

However, once he turned 17, he hit a wall. He wanted to continue playing competitive hockey but didn’t have any U18 teams in the state that were a viable next step.

That led the Stafford family to Louisiana, where Alexander joined a North American 3 Hockey League (NA3HL) team to continue his junior hockey journey.

As the name suggests, the NA3HL is considered the third tier of junior hockey in North America. Junior hockey allows players ages 16-20 to take the next step ahead of playing professional hockey or collegiate hockey with the ACHA (American College Hockey Association, which largely governs club teams) or NCAA.

The third tier focuses on players who are developing in hopes of either moving up to the top two tiers, the USHL and NAHL, respectively.

The NA3HL also occupies a unique spot in the junior hockey landscape as the only third-tier league to be USA Hockey sanctioned, meaning they follow the rules, guidelines and comprehensive development model that the nation’s governing body set.

Beyond that, the Prowlers limit their roster to just 25 players to ensure that everyone on the roster gets meaningful ice time to develop.

“We kind of focus on them to go ACHA or NCAA Division I and III,” Walt said. “So that’s kind of where we fall in. We’re that continuous development level of USA Hockey. Small rosters, 25-man rosters, so that these players not only get the practice time, but they get the real in-game touching the puck in in a real game situation, not just a bunch of players that never see a game.”

The league also limits the number of international players on any given team to four, which helps focus on domestic development, but in addition to that, the vast majority of the Prowlers players hail from Alabama and the Southeast.

That includes Birmingham natives Matthew Hunter and Bryce Croyle, Chelsea’s Carey Fabris and Alexander Stafford himself.

Walt said that a big reason for the large in-state contingent was the lack of U18 options for players in Alabama, and this year’s local players only reinforces the need for a junior hockey team in the center of the state.

“We drew a lot out of Alabama, which is fantastic, which was the hope of having a place for these local kids to go and still play competitive hockey at a high level without having travel way out of state to go do it,” Walt said. “Over half our roster is probably Alabama, but also we have also California kids, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota. We do have one player from Germany as well.”

The Prowlers are already nine games into their season in the Southeast Division of the NA3HL with a 3-6 record. After losing their first six games of the season to the Texas RoadRunners and Louisiana Drillers, Pelham found its form with three-straight wins over the Bayou State Rougarou. Each of those nine games took place at home in Pelham.

With coach Phil Tesoriero leading the Prowlers, the team’s hope is to not only win as many games as possible in their inaugural season, but also develop the players in hopes of sending them to the next level.

Walt noted that with the ACHA preferring a year of junior hockey experience, the Prowlers now serve as the next step in the in-state pipeline that can develop players for Alabama and Auburn’s club hockey teams, especially Alabama since the two teams share facilities in Pelham.

The Stafford family hopes to continue monitoring the progress of Prowlers alums to cheer them on to success at the highest levels.

“We always say, ‘We love you, but we don’t want you to stay,’” Walt said. “Because, again, we’re the development Tier Three, so we want these players for a year or two tops, and we want them to continue to progress in competitive hockey and move up to the higher leagues or to college.”

Beyond that though, Walt hopes that the Prowlers help spur another surge of hockey interest in the Birmingham area just like when the Bulls came back to Pelham as an SPHL team. He hopes they can contribute to the growth of the game that can in turn fuel the team’s roster with local players for years to come.

“The hope is, with us being here, that we’ll see a surge of youth hockey again, and then maybe the U16s and the U18 teams won’t struggle so much to fill a roster because they have us in the area to help grow it,” Walt said.

With the continued success of the Bulls and Huntsville Havoc, the addition of an SPHL team in Mobile in 2027, a healthy collegiate scene with teams at UAH, Alabama, Auburn and UAB, and youth hockey programs across the state, the Staffords are bullish on hockey in Alabama and are excited to be part of its growth.

“We got three pro teams now in the state of Alabama,” Stafford said. “Alabama’s not going to just be known as a football state. We going to be known as a hockey state here pretty soon.”

The Prowlers return home from a five-game road trip on Thursday, Oct. 23 at 8:15 p.m. against the Louisiana Drillers.