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"Springfield Thunderbirds" Chosen As Name Of New AHL Team

Springfield Thunderbirds

The name, logo, and ownership of the new professional hockey team in western Massachusetts were announced Wednesday.

The unveiling of the Thunderbirds name and logo for Springfield’s new AHL team came at a public event at the MassMutual Center, where the team will play its home games starting in October. 

Springfield developer Paul Picknelly heads a group of more than two dozen local business owners who have invested in the new team.

" Hockey is back in Springfield and it is here to stay," declared Picknelly to loud cheers.

When the Springfield Falcons left for Arizona at the end of last season, the local investment group quickly purchased the Portland Pirates and moved that franchise to Springfield.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.