The Regina Silver Foxes is the name of a Tier II Junior "A" team that played in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League from 1971-76.
Note: It is also a current Prairie Junior Hockey League team, which was established in 2013.
Team History[]
The team may have originated as an independent team that competed in the 1969-70 Saskatchewan Junior B Playoffs as a team with this name competed with no known league affiliation. Either the team relocated to Fort Qu'Appelle or the team originated as the Fort Qu'Appelle Silver Foxes with the 1970-71 season as the league expanded from 4 to 7 teams as it was being rebuilt as a provincial Junior A league as a result of the previous SJHL morphing into the present day Major Junior level WHL and from the subsequent reorganization of junior hockey in Canada with the Memorial Cup only being for Major Junior teams and the Tier-II teams playing in Junior A and competing for the Manitoba Centennial Cup. There stay in Fort Qu'Appelle would last for one uneventful season with the team compiling a 5-29-2 record and relocating to Regina, in hindsight it was the one time the team did not finish in last place.
As their league finishes attest, the Foxes didn't amount to much in the competitive SJHL, but their ending of a crippling losing streak during the 1974-75 season was major front-page news locally, when the Foxes beat the Moose Jaw Canucks on home ice (their only win that season as it turned out). The Foxes' had difficulty attracting stellar talent to their roster due in part to the residence the team shared with the Major Junior Regina Pats (WCHL) and the Foxes' crosstown rivals the Regina Pat Blues. The Silver Foxes' home arena was the Al Ritchie Memorial Centre in East-Central Regina.
On February 2, 1975 the team defeated the Moose Jaw Canucks on a Brent Lewis goal in overtime to end Junior A hockey's longest losing streak of 58 consecutive loses. Ex-player Gary George remembers the day as if it were yesterday. Having played for the team from 1974 to 1976 "that win was as big as the Stanley Cup. I am very proud to have been a part of the Silver Fox organization."
The team would finish its' existence with a 35-252-2 record during their six year existence.