The Minnesota Blue Ox were a professional
roller hockey
Roller hockey is a form of hockey played on a dry surface using wheeled skates. It can be played with traditional roller skates (quad skates) or with inline skates and use either a ball or puck. Combined, roller hockey is played in nearly 60 cou ...
team based in
Minneapolis
Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...
,
Minnesota
Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...
, United States, that played in
Roller Hockey International
Roller Hockey International was a professional inline hockey league that operated in North America from 1993 to 1999. It was the first major professional league for inline hockey.
History
League president Dennis Murphy had been involved in ...
.
History
Formed in the wake of the former
Minnesota Arctic Blast, who played at
Target Center
Target Center is a multi-purpose arena located in Minneapolis that opened in 1990. It hosts major family shows, concerts, sporting events, graduations and private events. Target Corporation, founded and headquartered in Minneapolis since 1902, h ...
in 1994, the Blue Ox joined RHI and were placed in the five-team
Central Division (
Buffalo Stampede
The Buffalo Stampede were a basketball team based in Buffalo, New York. The team competed in the Premier Basketball League (PBL) for two seasons in 2009 and 2010, and in the Atlantic Coast Professional Basketball League (ACPBL) for the 2010� ...
,
Chicago Cheetahs,
Detroit Motor City Mustangs,
St. Louis Vipers).
After a 13–11–0 in the 1995 regular season (second in the Central), Minnesota was the fourth-seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. The Blue Ox were quickly eliminated in two games (best-of 3 series) by the fifth-seeded
New Jersey Rockin' Rollers.
[
The Blue Ox finished the 1999 season with a record of 11–15–0, ranked third in the Eastern Division. The team's average home attendance of 304 was the lowest in the league. The Buffalo Wings knocked off the Blue Ox in the first round of the playoffs.'Wings make sure this won’t be year of the (Blue) Ox"]
''The Buffalo News
''The Buffalo News'' is the daily newspaper of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area, located in downtown Buffalo, New York.
It was for decades the only paper fully owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. On January 29, 2020, th ...
'', August 19, 1999. Accessed December 28, 2023, via Newspapers.com
Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. It is owned by The ...
. "The Wings resisted that urge remaining composed in the face of an all-out assault by the Minnesota Blue Ox Buffalo’s cool approach paid off with an 8-3 win over Minnesota in the RHI playoff opener before a sparse crowd at the Arrowhead Pond"
Season-by-season
References
See also
*
Minnesota Arctic Blast
Roller Hockey International teams
Sports clubs and teams established in 1995
Sports in Minneapolis
1995 establishments in Minnesota
Sports clubs and teams disestablished in 1999
1999 disestablishments in Minnesota
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