Rail Yard Dawgs Hockey

Roanoke has had professional hockey since 1967, when the Salem/Roanoke Valley Rebels took the ice. The Rail Yard Dawgs are the sixth franchise to play here, following a lineage that includes the Roanoke Express of the East Coast Hockey League and the short-lived Roanoke Valley Vipers. When an ownership group led by Bob McGinn purchased a dormant Mississippi franchise and relocated it to Roanoke for the 2016–17 season, they named the team after the city's railroad past — the Berglund Center sits near the Norfolk Southern Railway tracks and the Roanoke Shops, remnants of the industry that turned a salt-lick crossroads into Southwest Virginia's economic hub in 1882. The city chose railroads; railroads chose hockey. The Dawgs' logo depicts the head of their mascot, Diesel, wearing a train conductor hat with the Mill Mountain Star — Roanoke's 88.5-foot illuminated landmark, arguably the city's most iconic image. The team plays October through April. Tickets run under $20, one of the best-value live sports experiences in the region. The franchise opened with a sellout crowd on October 21, 2016, a 2–0 loss to Knoxville. In the 2021–22 season, they reached the President's Cup Final for the first time in franchise history, falling to Peoria three games to one. The following year they finished it, beating Birmingham 2–1 in overtime on May 2, 2023, to claim their first SPHL championship. The Dawgs partner with Angels of Assisi, the largest private animal shelter in the Roanoke Valley, and the Virginia Museum of Transportation, which houses the 611 Steam Engine — a locomotive built in Roanoke in the 1940s that once appeared on the ECHL Roanoke Express logo. Show up when playoff seeding tightens and the crowd remembers what Roanoke has always been: a rail town that knows how to root for the home team.