Ask a casual sports fan where hockey fits in Oklahoma and you may get a shrug. Ask anyone who has followed the game in Tulsa and you will hear about a lightning strike, a team that won a championship while homeless, a coach who later became famous for loud suits on Canadian television, and a franchise that keeps coming back. The 2026-27 season is the 75th played under the Oilers name. This is how Tulsa got here.
Tulsa hockey timeline
- 1928-29: The Oilers debut in the American Hockey Association.
- 1929: The Tulsa Coliseum opens on New Year’s Day.
- 1942-1945: Hockey pauses for World War II.
- 1945-1951: The Oilers play in the United States Hockey League.
- 1952: The Coliseum burns after a lightning strike.
- 1964-1984: Central Professional / Central Hockey League era; Adams Cup titles in 1968, 1976 and 1984.
- 1992: The Oilers return in the new CHL and win the title in their first season back.
- 2008: Move to the BOK Center.
- 2014-15: The Oilers join the ECHL.
- 2026-27: The 75th Oilers season.
The Coliseum years (1928-1951)
Hockey arrived in Tulsa with oil money. The Tulsa Coliseum, built downtown at Fifth Street and Elgin Avenue and financed by oilman Walter Whiteside, opened on January 1, 1929. It was designed to be converted to a sheet of ice within hours and held one of the first indoor skating rinks in that part of the country. For a city that rarely sees a hard freeze, it was a remarkable building.
The Oilers played in the American Hockey Association, a minor professional league that stretched across the Midwest. Success came quickly — according to TulsaPeople’s history of the club, Tulsa won the league in each of its first three seasons. Future Hockey Hall of Famer Duke Keats played for those early teams.
The AHA shut down in 1942 as World War II pulled players into service. When the league returned in 1945 as the United States Hockey League, the Oilers returned with it and played until the USHL folded in 1951.
Lightning and a long silence (1952-1963)
On September 20, 1952, lightning struck the Coliseum. Later accounts blame the radio antenna on its roof for drawing the bolt, and the old wooden structure burned to the ground. With no league and now no arena, Tulsa went more than a decade without professional hockey.
The CHL era: Maple Leafs, Don Cherry and three titles (1964-1984)
Hockey came back in 1964, when the Oilers joined the Central Professional Hockey League, which later shortened its name to the Central Hockey League. The new Oilers were owned by Maple Leaf Gardens Limited and served as a development team for the Toronto Maple Leafs; later the club was also tied to the New York Rangers.
That NHL connection brought remarkable names through town. A young defenseman named Pat Quinn, later a celebrated NHL coach, played parts of four seasons in Tulsa. Don Cherry spent the 1965-66 season with the Oilers, long before he became a Canadian broadcasting icon. Hall of Famer Marcel Pronovost, future NHL coach Rick Bowness and five members of the 1980 U.S. “Miracle on Ice” team also wore the uniform.
The Oilers won the CHL’s Adams Cup three times: in 1968, 1976 and 1984. The last of those is one of the strangest championship stories in minor-league hockey.
Champions without a home (1984)
In February 1984, the team’s owners went bankrupt and the Oilers went into receivership. Rather than leave the schedule unbalanced, the league’s other teams helped fund the club so it could finish the season. The catch: the Oilers played their final six weeks entirely on the road, effectively based out of Denver.
Coached by Tom Webster and backstopped by future NHL star goaltender John Vanbiesbrouck, with future NHL executive George McPhee in the lineup, the road-weary Oilers won the championship anyway. Then the league folded, and Tulsa was without a team again.
The modern Oilers (1992-present)
The name returned in 1992, when a new Central Hockey League launched with Tulsa as a charter member. The revived Oilers won the league title in their very first season, 1992-93, clinching it on the home ice of the Oklahoma City Blazers. Taylor Hall, the team’s current general manager, scored 35 goals for that club.
The Oilers played every one of the new CHL’s 22 seasons — only one other team, the Wichita Thunder, can say the same. In 2008 the team moved from the Tulsa Convention Center into the new BOK Center, and when the CHL ceased operations in 2014, the Oilers joined the ECHL for the 2014-15 season.
The ECHL years have had real highlights. Under head coach Rob Murray, the 2018-19 team won 43 games, captured the Mountain Division title and pushed the Toledo Walleye to seven games in the Western Conference Final. The 2024-25 club won 40 games and reached the playoffs again. Since 2020 the Oilers have been the ECHL affiliate of the Anaheim Ducks, and in 2024 the club opened the WeStreet Ice Center, giving the team a practice home and the city two more sheets of public ice.
How Tulsa counts to 75
The math behind the anniversary is a nice summary of the whole story:
| Era | League | Seasons |
|---|---|---|
| 1928-29 to 1941-42 | American Hockey Association | 14 |
| 1945-46 to 1950-51 | United States Hockey League | 6 |
| 1964-65 to 1983-84 | CPHL / CHL | 20 |
| 1992-93 to 2026-27 | CHL, then ECHL | 35 |
| Total | 75 | |
Why it matters
Very few minor-league towns can trace a team name back almost a century. Tulsa’s version of that story includes fires, bankruptcies and long gaps — and every time, the Oilers came back. That persistence is a big part of why a Saturday night at the BOK Center still draws families who have been coming for generations.
Want more? Read about the Oilers’ rivalry with Wichita or our 2026-27 season preview.
