Birmingham Bulls (SPHL)

The Birmingham Bulls are a professional hockey team scheduled to join the Southern Professional Hockey League for the 2017-18 season. The team was announced on April 26, 2017. The team will be based out of the Pelham Civic Center in the Birmingham suburb of Pelham, Alabama.

History
In 1992, Art Clarkson obtained the rights to an East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) franchise for Birmingham and named it after the former World Hockey Association team, the Birmingham Bulls. However, he sold the ECHL team in 1997 and it eventually relocated in 2001. In early 2017, Clarkson began proposing a new Bulls team to begin play due to the increased presence of hockey in the area. Due to arena issues, the team could not play at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex like the other former teams, but instead settled on the smaller Pelham Civic Center in nearby Pelham, Alabama, in February 2017. The Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL) announced its approval of the Bulls as an expansion team on April 26, 2017.