Rotterdam Pandas was a professional

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...

team in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. They played in the Dutch

Eredivisie The Eredivisie (; "Honour Division" or "Premier Division") is a professional association football league in the Netherlands and the highest level of the Dutch football league system. The league was founded in 1956, two years after the start o ...

, the highest-level hockey division in the Netherlands. Home games were played at the Weena-ijshal, a (now-closed) arena near Rotterdam Central train station.

History

Ice hockey had been played in Rotterdam since the 1950s. The Rotterdam Panda's team played six seasons in the Eredivisie, winning its first national championship during its first season. It attracted several players from other teams in the Eredivisie, especially Nijmegen. The team sported a green and white jersey with the logo of the

World Wildlife Fund The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is a Swiss-based international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the ...

panda as a crest. Securing a home arena was a major problem for the Panda's. The Weena-ijshal shut its doors in 1993. Since then, there has been no commitment to build a new ice hockey arena in Rotterdam, despite discussions as lately as 2007.

Season results

''Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, T = Ties, L = Losses, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against, Pts = Points''

Notable players

* Ron Berteling *

Henk Hille Henk Hille (born 16 May 1959) is a Dutch former professional ice hockey player. A defenceman, he played three seasons in the Allsvenskan in the mid-1980s and 48 times for the Netherlands national ice hockey team including all their contests ...

* Mari Saris * Alexander Schaafsma *

Sean Simpson Sean Simpson (born May 4, 1960) is a Canadian ice hockey coach and former professional ice hockey player. He last served as head coach of Adler Mannheim in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL) in Germany. As a player, Simpson played two AHL season ...

* Ben Tijnagel *

Harrie van Heumen Harrie van Heumen (born 24 December 1959) is a former ice hockey forward from the Netherlands. He participated in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York Lake Placid is a Administrative divisions of New York#Village, village in the A ...

* Bill Wensink

Championships

;Dutch National Championship 3 times: 1986–87; 1988–89; 1989–90

References

External links

1986 Team photo with player and staff names
(

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

)
Netherlands Ice Hockey Federation history
(

) {{RotterdamSport Ice hockey teams in the Netherlands Ice hockey clubs established in 1986 Sports clubs and teams in Rotterdam