The Charlotte Checkers and their fans put on a display Friday night worthy of Game 1 of the Calder Cup Finals.
Pitted against the visiting Abbotsford Canucks, they delivered a sold-out building and a loud, rambunctious one. Even with no meaningful history between Charlotte and an opponent from clear-across the other side of the AHL map, Checkers fans quickly made the visitors feel unwelcome. Abbotsford’s come-from-behind double-overtime 4-3 victory should only spice up the budding rivalry that much more.
The humidity in the South can envelop a person, and Charlotte is no different. Friday brought plenty of that overwhelming humidity in Charlotte leading up to the game. The Bojangles Coliseum unit went into high gear Friday night to keep the ice playable, especially with the building’s largest-ever Checkers crowd – 8,667 strong – packing inside to watch these two teams fight for the Calder Cup.
Game 2 is Sunday afternoon before the two teams fly west for Games 3 and 4 as well as Game 5, if necessary. The series would return to Charlotte for Games 6 and 7.
2025 Abbotsford Canucks vs Charlotte Checkers
So, who knows whether Sunday could be the home finale for the Checkers until next October. Regardless, the Checkers and their fans showed Friday how they have built one of the liveliest, most energetic home environments in the entire 32-team AHL. Playing inside of Bojangles Coliseum, a building that opened in 1955 and underwent a dramatic 2015 makeover for the Checkers’ return.
There is pre-game tailgating in the Bojangles Coliseum parking lot. Jason Atkins, the man they call “Greazy Keys” provides a large portion of the game’s soundtrack on the organ and keytar. Ever hear Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” on the organ? Checkers fans have. Fans in the arena’s Red Club can sit feet away from where the Checkers walk out from their dressing room and to the ice. NASCAR’s Kevin Harvick rang the opening bell Friday night. There are rinkside ticket options offering table-top seating.
It’s a family-oriented, energetic environment that still makes the game on the ice the main show and priority. Much like the Charlotte area, the fan base features a mixture of transplants and the Charlotte-born-and-raised.
The AHL had established something of a presence in the South before. The Jacksonville Barons had a brief stint in the 1970s. So did the Carolina Monarchs in the 1990s. Before the AHL had found success in a westward move that eventually made it a cross-continental league, the South had been an attractive target for growth, especially with the NHL expanding and the AHL needing to find new markets to house those expansion clubs’ affiliates. Go where the people and the money are going, after all, and the people and their money have been going south and west for decades now. Charlotte, a banking center, has been one of those fast-growing markets.
The most successful effort saw the Norfolk Admirals move up to the AHL, where they remained until 2015. There have been various iterations of the Checkers through the years, so hockey in Charlotte did have a history, albeit one with some significant ups and downs. Versions of the Checkers had moved through the old Eastern Hockey League and Southern Hockey League. After the SHL pulled out in January 1977, the city went without hockey until the ECHL arrived in 1993.
That time it really worked. The ECHL’s Checkers won a championship in their third season and created plenty of regional rivalries during the 1990s and into the 2000s. It was that successful ECHL operation that took a chance in 2010 and climbed up to the AHL as the new affiliate for the Carolina Hurricanes. That choice paid off in 2019 with a Calder Cup championship.
But it’s box-office success that counts most, ultimately. Championship banners only go so far if a team cannot pay its bills, after all, and the Checkers have found their way inside of a tough, competitive major-league market for the entertainment dollar.
Through the years Checkers have found their niche in what has become a decidedly major-league market through the years and decades. The ever-dominant NFL brought the Carolina Panthers to life in 1995. The NBA came, left, and then returned, and the Charlotte Hornets reside downtown where the Checkers used to call Spectrum Center their home until relocating to Bojangles Coliseum in 2015. Fast-rising MLS has Charlotte FC downtown as well at Bank of America Stadium. That same stadium will host the likes of Bayern Munich and Real Madrid in a pair of games in the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 next week later this month. NASCAR has strong roots in the area, and there are Minor League Baseball’s Charlotte Knights, who play at a stunning ballpark downtown, Truist Field.
Truist Field, which hosted the Checkers’ Queen City Outdoor Classic game in January 2024, plays a role in the team’s history. So does Bojangles Coliseum, a quirky, old-school venue that offered the Checkers a true home of their own. Sharing an NBA building downtown brought some of the amenities that come with a modern-day major-league, but it did not work for the Checkers. Valuable weekend dates? Hard to come by. Sightlines for hockey? Not so great.
Checkers chief operating officer Tera Black led the effort to bring the team back to its roots, to the building that it had left after the 2005-06 season. Bojangles Coliseum underwent a dramatic overhaul that added an upgraded seating bowl, player amenities, arena lighting, a sound system, and a new video board in time for the 2015-16 season.
With the minor-league hockey business – the entire entertainment business, really – changing in the 2010s, the Checkers showed that local, affordable entertainment can still work even in an era with countless options competing for people’s time, attention, and wallets. For a league heading to places like Laval (just outside of Montreal), San Diego, and other major-league markets, that proof-of-concept mattered. The Checkers and other AHL big-market success stories through the past 25 years have provided the blueprint and confidence that those incoming markets could work and do so long-term as well.
After splitting with the Hurricanes in 2020 and sitting out the 2020-21 pandemic season, the Checkers quickly rebounded. They landed a new affiliation with the Florida Panthers, just as that team was primed to begin a run of NHL dominance. With Florida becoming an annual Stanley Cup contender, the Panthers have not always had a deep base of prospects to station in Charlotte, but they have empowered the Checkers nevertheless to put together a strong, Calder Cup-capable roster. Defenseman Trevor Carrick, a holdover from the Carolina days and a 2019 Calder Cup champion, came back after a six-year absence on an AHL deal last summer. John Leonard went to Charlotte with an AHL contract and ended up with a 36-goal season, tying him for second in the AHL. Kyle Criscuolo, another Calder Cup champion, joined up in Charlotte. The Panthers brought in a top veteran in Kaapo Kähkönen in a March trade with the Winnipeg Jets that helped an already-formidable Checkers team to become a top contender and march through three Calder Cup Playoff rounds to reach this match-up with Abbotsford.
They have reached the Calder Cup Playoffs in all four seasons of this affiliation with Florida, a partnership that offers clear-cut logistical advantages. The Panthers had wandered from one AHL affiliation to the next across the United States, never finding the right fit or staying in one very long. The same management group that built this Panthers powerhouse saw the advantages of the well-run, turn-key AHL set-up that Charlotte offered. Direct flights shuttle day and night between Charlotte and South Florida, making player movement simple. And while the Checkers are the Eastern Conference’s southernmost franchise, Charlotte being a major air hub means that going out on a road trip is a quick, simple process.
Another major step came last summer when Zawyer Sports & Entertainment, a group with prominent ECHL holdings, purchased a controlling interest in the Checkers. Zawyer features Harvick, Tim Tebow, J.J. Jansen of the Panthers, and Fox NASCAR analyst Regan Smith among others. The deal made sure that Michael Kahn remained as the team’s largest minority partner and retained the entire Charlotte front office.
Success has continued at the box office, and the team finished 10th in regular-season attendance with a 6,964 average. With Zawyer’s financial resources, further time to roll out plans, and this run to the Calder Cup Finals, the Checkers’ place in the Charlotte landscape could become that much stronger.
Checkers head coach Geordie Kinnear’s Charlotte roots go back to that first 2010-11 AHL season when he was still an assistant coach. He marveled at Friday night’s atmosphere.
“It was awesome,” Kinnear said. “It was very hot in here, but it was an awesome atmosphere. [The] fans were into it, [and] they saw a good hockey game.”
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