Remember the Tupelo T-Rex?
Dec. 23—As foreign as it may sound more than 20 years later, there was once a professional hockey team in Tupelo: the Tupelo T-Rex.
It was only a brief moment in time, but there was a period when locals would flock to what is now Cadence Bank Arena, bang on the glass and cheer on the town's hockey team.
Hockey? In Mississippi? Surely, there's no way that could ever work.
But for a couple years, the Tupelo T-Rex did just that.
The beginnings
The Tupelo T-Rex took to the ice for the first time in a competitive game in October 1998 as a member of the Western Professional Hockey League (WPHL).
The T-Rex were the odd team out for a few reasons. For one, Tupelo paled in comparison in terms of size to the most of the league, which featured teams in places like Austin, Corpus Christi and El Paso. For another, the T-Rex were the only team in the league from Mississippi.
Tupelo beat the Monroe Moccasins 4-1 in its inaugural game, but the losses soon piled up after that. A coaching change later during that first season didn't turn things around, and the T-Rex finished their maiden voyage through the WPHL with a 20-45-4 record, which was good enough for last in the league.
Enter George Dupont.
Dupont spent the 1998-99 season with the New Mexico Scorpions and was second on the team in points. He turned to coaching a season later, and while he had played in non-traditional hockey markets with the Scorpions and the Oklahoma City Blazers, Tupelo was a little different.
"New Mexico and Oklahoma City are much bigger cities, right, and in Oklahoma City we were averaging 10,000 people a game," Dupont said. "A million people in Oklahoma City or whatever it is compared to 30,000 in a small, non-traditional market, you were known in the community, right. Like I know the players, when they went around out for breakfast, around the city were known, supported. There were a number of people who took an interest in them and the team."
Defenseman Regan Harper was one of the players that the T-Rex acquired in the offseason. Harper, who played for the league's Corpus Christi Icerays the year before, recalled basically getting recruited by Dupont, as the two were previously teammates in New Mexico and Oklahoma City. Hailing from the small town of Birch Hills, Saskatchewan, Tupelo was a perfect fit for Harper.
"I had to look up the city a little bit, the size of it," Harper said. "In hindsight, it was an interesting decision to make, leaving the team I was on to come up to such a small city. But I pretty instantly fell in love with kind of the people, the culture and just the size of it, growing up in a small town in Saskatchewan."
Between a new coach and some new faces, there were hopes of a much better season than Year 1. Results on the ice didn't turn around right away, though. Losses and some bad luck in shootouts early on — the T-Rex lost each of the first six shootouts they played — had Tupelo struggling at 1-7-6.
"It was a slow start, a little bit of a struggle, but the fans kept coming out," Dupont said. "Shootouts are exciting, but they also can lead to disappointment, which we found out early, but then we found ways to win later on."
Early on, even when things were going well, the T-Rex would find a way to drop games, which didn't help after a tough first season.
"We'd be up three goals and lose a game or up two goals and lose a game," Harper said. "Just seemed like the first 10, 15 games everything was going against us. I think combined with how bad the year before was for some of the remaining players can instill some doubt and lack of confidence."
A 9-3 win over the Arkansas Glaciercats on Jan. 21, 2000 snapped a seven-game losing skid, and it was the beginning of a torrid run down the stretch for the T-Rex. The final 30 games of the regular season saw the T-Rex go 19-9-2, including an 11-game winning streak that helped Tupelo clinch a playoff spot.
That run was also one of the first highlights that came to Dupont's mind when looking back on his time here.
"There was some thrilling games in that to make that happen, when you just kind of felt like destiny was working for you," Dupont said. "There was a game, I think, we were down four goals in Alexandria with two minutes left in the game, and we scored five goals. That typically is something that would be considered insurmountable or unlikely to happen."
Tupelo ended up getting bounced in the first round of the playoffs, but better things were to come for the T-Rex.
'Rockford Trio' delivers year to remember
Jason Firth was in a position that dozens of hockey players find themselves in: good enough to get drafted by an NHL team — granted, he was the 208th overall pick in 1991 — but not good enough to make it. While he never played in an NHL game, Firth dominated lower minor leagues. In other words, he was perfect for the T-Rex.
"Before I retired and got into coaching, we used to skate together in Ottawa, so we had that mutual connection," Dupont said. "We kind of did what we had to try to convince him that Tupelo was a good place to come and play."
Firth ended up joining Tupelo's ranks, and with him came two of his teammates with the United Hockey League's Rockford Icehogs in forward Brant Blackned and defenseman Barry McKinlay. They became known as the Rockford Trio, and soon the T-Rex had unmatched talent in the WPHL.
"(Firth) was regarded as one of the best players of that level at the time, and sometimes you sit on the bench and watch these guys play and they do certain things," Dupont said. "It's like, 'Wow, that was pretty impressive, right?'"
Firth had a pedigree and a skillset that was unmatched at the WPHL level.
"Just his awareness and intelligence was off the charts," Harper said. "Probably the best guy I've ever seen for being able to knock pucks out of the air. He wouldn't really even guard the guy super close. If they tried to pass, he would just knock the puck out of the air and take it and go the other way.
"His eye-hand coordination and just his awareness and intelligence, that part's probably at the NHL level. It's just whether he didn't get the breaks or maybe his size, it's just different factors for every player. But his intelligence was what separated him from a lot of players."
The T-Rex became an offensive dynamo that season, scoring a league-high 287 goals in 71 games. Firth had 55 goals and 71 assists for a league-high 126 points, earning him the league's MVP award.
"You could tell he was different than the rest of them," said Mark Beason, who covered the T-Rex for the Daily Journal. "He wasn't a big guy, but he was a very smart hockey player. He sort of knew where to be, he was very quick. Those three guys played a lot of hockey together."
Opposing teams couldn't keep up with Tupelo's high-octane offense, and the T-Rex finished atop the league in points after ending the regular season with a 46-20-5 record. Not only did their high-scoring ways shoot them up the standings, but it also created plenty of buzz around town. There were more than just fights to see when the T-Rex were in town.
"Even people that are casual hockey fans, they like to see goals," Beason said. "They like to see obviously the physical side of it as well. That team was fun to watch in that aspect, so you have a pretty good atmosphere. That arena was a pretty intimate setting, it would get fairly loud at times for the big games or a weekend game."
It wasn't all just high-flying offense, either. Outside of the Central Texas Stampede, which folded midseason, Tupelo gave up the fourth-fewest goals in the league. Harper finished as the team's leader in plus-minus at plus-62.
The T-Rex were also playing their best hockey of the season heading into the playoffs. They had spent most of the season above .500, but they went supernova down the stretch, winning 21 of their last 23 games.
Tupelo drew Corpus Christi in the opening round of the playoffs, and after dropping Game 1 of the best-of-seven series, The T-Rex outscored the Icerays 22-9 to win four straight games and take the series. That set up a showdown with the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs, and the two teams already had a rivalry brewing.
"Bossier's always pretty good, and it was the closest natural rival the T-Rex had," Beason said. "It wasn't that far of a drive down there, so you would have fans that would go back and forth."
The Mudbugs also had their own tradition of throwing a certain object on the ice, likely inspired by the NHL's Detroit Red Wings (octopi) and Florida Panthers (rats).
"They had these rubber crawfish that they would throw on the ice after, like, a big goal or something," Beason said.
Tupelo won the first game of the series, but it all went downhill after that. The Mudbugs went on to win the next four games, including one in overtime and another decided by one goal, to eliminate the T-Rex.
Bossier-Shreveport ended up winning the championship that year.
"I remember when they got put out how that was a tough pill to swallow," said Gregg Ellis, who also covered the T-Rex for the Journal. "That's when you knew the fans were catching on to this."
But for Tupelo, the dream season was over.
"In one-goal games, it's a matter of inches sometimes, right?" Dupont said. "We were right in the thick of things and something to build. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to kind of take that next step the following year."
Harper never ended up winning a championship at the professional level. That magical run in 2001 was one of his best chances.
"That was probably the most disappointing — yeah, one of the two, New Mexico, too — disappointing ends to a season that I can remember," Harper said. "Just because of the expectations on us and the ones we put on ourselves because we thought we had a legitimate championship team there. Enough good players and the right mix of players to definitely compete and get into the finals."
Unfortunately, that run was the peak for the T-Rex.
The meteor and extinction
The memorable 2000-01 season for the T-Rex would turn out to be the final one for the WPHL and ultimately the T-Rex as a professional hockey team.
The WPHL merged with the Central Hockey League, but the T-Rex went down a different road, citing financial concerns. They moved from professional hockey to junior hockey in the America West Hockey League. The T-Rex survived for two more seasons while icing almost impossibly bad teams — the team's record was a combined 4-107-1 across those two years.
But that was the last time the T-Rex took the ice.
"I really thought it was about to catch on, and then they just decided not to," Ellis said. "They went from minor league to junior league hockey, and that was just going to be a disaster."
The team had attempted to re-join the professional ranks by linking up with the Atlantic Coast Hockey League, and then that bid shifted to the South East Hockey League. The final nail in the coffin came when the CHL exercised its non-compete clause, as it owned the professional hockey rights in town dating back to the 2001 merger.
And just like that, the T-Rex were gone.
"However, the sounds of slap shots and body checks have been replaced with frigid silence," Ellis wrote at the time. "There will be no ice. The Zamboni has been retired. And excitement has once again turned into frustration for T-Rex diehards."
The T-Rex leave behind a complicated legacy. The team had its small but loyal fanbase, and it created excitement in a way that was unique and wouldn't be replicated in town. To this day, Cadence Bank Arena will still construct a rink during the winter and offer public skating sessions as well as hosting "Disney on Ice" shows.
The T-Rex still live in the memories of the fans that came and the players and coaches that made up the team. For players like Harper, it was one of their most memorable stops while bouncing around the minor hockey league circuit.
"This is not a lie, it was one of my most favorite places to play for the two years I was there," Harper said. "Just the hospitality and the people. I'm still in contact with people from down there.
"I was down there with my now-wife, and we came down in 2008 and stopped in on a few people. It was like old times. They're very hospitable people. When we came down on the road trip, it was a couple different families we told we were coming, and it was like they rolled out the red carpet down there."
"After the game, the one place I remember a lot of the hockey players going and fans would be The Stables downtown," Ellis said. "It was kind of the local bar not far from the arena by the old courthouse. They were celebrities. Because they were so good and they were visible and they did a lot in the community, people knew who they were. I enjoyed seeing Tupelo embrace something that is obviously not the norm here in hockey and really support it."
But the T-Rex also had their fair share of issues. Constant ownership changes meant that the team's survival was seemingly always tenuous. The T-Rex also had their struggles at the box office, as HockeyDB lists Tupelo with the third-lowest attendance during their league-leading 2000-01 season at 2,196, not counting Central Texas.
"You had a lot of the people that just wanted to see, hey, what's this hockey stuff?" Ellis said. "They may come a couple of times a year, or if they really liked it they would come all the time.
"But they also had a lot of drama. I felt like I wrote more stories about issues with management or players getting in trouble. Just all kinds of stuff that comes with any beat. That wasn't a big deal, but there was that as well."
Hockey's presence in Tupelo was brief, but it left behind plenty of memories for its fans, coaches and players alike, all while introducing the frozen sport to a Southern town.
"Being a part of the grassroots a little bit, having hockey schools there the years I was there, helping kids learn to skate and play and then hearing about how they're still playing and skating years later, that was a pretty enjoyable part of that, too," Harper said. "Just bringing hockey, I guess, to a non-hockey market."
