Butte Irish

The Butte Irish Hockey Club had been previously located in Vail, Colorado, where they competed as the Vail Avalanche. The franchise relocated to Butte, Montana for the 1996-97 AFHL season, and began play as the Butte Fighting Irish, a tribute to the town's rich Irish heritage. The University of Notre Dame obtained a court order requiring the team to drop the moniker, claiming they owned the name. The team name was shortened to simply "Butte Irish" the following season.

The Butte (Fighting) Irish were coached in their initial season by 1984 USA Hockey Olympian and NHL veteran Gary Sampson. They were very competitive, finishing in 2nd place. They defeated the Central Wyoming Outlaws in 7 games in the semi-finals before being swept 4-0 by the Billings Bulls in the Borne Cup Finals.

Sampson left the team midway through the following season to accept a position with the Rochester (MN) Mustangs of the USHL. His replacement was Denver University graduate Mike Corbett. The team failed to make the playoffs that season.

Corbett coached another two full seasons in Butte, and made the playoffs each year, before being unceremoniously discharged at the end of the 1999-2000 season. Corbett accepted a position with the rival Billings Bulls the following year, while Butte hired Tom McDermott. The 2000-01 season was the low point of the franchise, as they endured a 33-game losing streak, posting only 6 wins all season. McDermott was fired midseason in January of 2001, and replaced by his assistant, Joe Liquori.

In what would end up being the teams final season, the Butte Irish landed a solid coaching tandem in Brian Meisner and Mike Perkins. The team made the playoffs, but were eliminated 3-1 by a powerful Bozeman ICEDOGS team. The teams membership in the AWHL was revoked at the end of the season, a direct result of years of instability, mismanagement, and a failure of the ownership to stay current with league dues and other bills. The Butte Irish roster, or "protected list", was awarded to the expansion Wichita Falls (TX) Rustlers, and the coaching staff of Meisner and Perkins were hired there as well.

The one constant in the teams six years was the radio voice of Arch Ecker. He broadcast nearly every Butte Irish game from the teams inception on local radio station 1370 KXTL, and also provided streaming audio of the games online, which at the time was a groundbreaking technology, and far from commonplace. When the team ceased operations, Ecker was hired by the Helena Bighorns of the AWHL where he went on to work for four seasons before heading to the Santa Fe Roadrunners of the NAHL in 2006.

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