Melbourne Ice (women)

The Melbourne Ice is an amateur women's ice hockey team based in Melbourne, Victoria. The club was founded in 2005 under the name Melbourne Fire, and in 2007 became one of the four original teams in the newly formed Australian Women's Ice Hockey League (AWIHL). The Ice have claimed nine Joan McKowen trophies and five league premierships, the most of any national ice hockey team in Australia. The team originally played as the Melbourne Dragons.

In 2010, the Dragons signed a memorandum of understanding with the Melbourne Ice Hockey Club, which runs the men’s AIHL team. The Ice bought a minority stake, while the Dragons kept majority control. The team rebranded as the Melbourne Ice Women and began trading as the Melbourne Ice.

They also moved to the Olympic-sized Henke Rink at the Melbourne Icehouse in the Docklands area. The Ice won their first national championship in 2011, beating the Sydney Sirens in a two-game final series. After a 1–0 shutout in the first game, they won the second 2–1 in a shootout to claim the Joan McKowen Trophy.

Over the next eight years, the team added six more championships and five premierships, including four straight doubles from 2013 to 2016. In every Joan McKowen final they have played against the Sydney Sirens, the Ice have come out on top. The 2019 final, held at the Adelaide IceArena, was decided with 36.7 seconds left when Bettina Meyers scored to break a 3–3 tie. That same year, the Melbourne Ice women were ranked 23rd on the Australasia Best Sporting Team list, a five-year analytical ranking produced by Platinum Asset Management and GAIN LINE Analytics.

Name and colours

Since the 2010 rebrand, the team has used navy blue, crimson red, and white as its colours, applied to uniforms, merchandise, and media. Before that, as the Melbourne Dragons, the colours were indigo blue and white. The team has only changed its name once. The Ice have played all home games at the O’Brien Icehouse in Docklands since the 2010–11 season.

Facilities

The facility is Australia’s only twin ice-sheet venue, with an Olympic-sized rink, café, bar, gym, pro shop, corporate boxes, and seating for 1,000 spectators plus standing room for 500 more. Before moving there, the team spent five years at the Olympic Ice Skating Centre in Oakleigh South, a small rink with a width two-thirds that of a regulation Olympic surface. Broadcasting of AWIHL games has shifted over the years.