Roller Hockey International: The 90s League That Previewed Hockey's Future

Roller Hockey International is easy to file under 90s punchline: neon jerseys, Rollerblades, a team called the Jawz.

Fans who were there remember something else. NHL arenas in July. ESPN2 cameras on the bench. Fifteen thousand people in the Montreal Forum watching hockey on wheels.

For six summers, RHI ran a live experiment on what hockey could be. A lot of what it tried, the NHL does now.

RHI was a professional inline hockey league that played from 1993 to 1997, plus one final season in 1999. It was founded by Dennis Murphy, the same man behind the ABA, the WHA and World Team Tennis. Murphy says the idea hit him in 1991, watching kids play roller hockey in the street.

The timing made sense. Gretzky's move to Los Angeles had set off a hockey boom in Southern California, and inline skating was everywhere.

Murphy wasn't going to fight the NHL this time. He was going to fill its arenas when they sat empty: in summer. Former Canadien Ralph Backstrom became commissioner.

The rules were built for speed. Four 12-minute quarters. Four skaters a side. No blue lines, no neutral zone, no two-line pass. Coaches described it as pond hockey crossed with European possession hockey. Yvan Cournoyer, who coached Montreal, said the only time you should lose the puck was when you shot it.

Then there was the puck. The founders wanted a puck, not a ball, so it would still feel like hockey. Nothing on the market survived pro shots on concrete, so co-founder Alex Bellehumeur developed one: a blaze-orange disc that became the Jofa SpeedPuck.

Remember it. It comes back later, and not in a good way.

The first official game was July 1, 1993, in Oakland. The Skates scored first, the LA Blades won 11-9, and somewhere in between a player scored a hat trick. Hockey fans threw their hats. According to Blades owner Jeanie Buss, the ushers didn't know the tradition and started throwing fans out.

Then the players had to learn a new sport. Floors ranged from concrete to Sport Court to gym hardwood, so wheels changed by building. Bullfrogs forward Victor Gervais remembered crews coating concrete floors with a light layer of Coca-Cola so wheels would grip. Goalies couldn't slide, so some taped plastic packing tape to their pads.

Scores like 10-9 and 13-12 were normal. The Anaheim Bullfrogs lost one regular-season game (in a shootout), won every playoff game and took the first Murphy Cup. It was the first championship ever won at the Pond, 14 years before the Ducks.

For a stretch, very. RHI doubled to 24 teams in 1994. A merger with a rival league brought an ESPN deal, and "RHI Hell on Wheels" ran on ESPN2 through 1996.

Broadcaster Jim Fox did interviews from the bench during live play and ran replays with players right after they scored. He believes RHI was the first league to do it.

Coaches pushed back hard. Every broadcast does it now.

The Buffalo Stampede beat Portland 8-7 on Sept. 2, 1994.

Fun fact

Two firsts. Two years.

In 1992, Manon Rhéaume became the first woman to play in an NHL preseason game. Two summers later she was in goal in RHI, and in July 1994 she faced Erin Whitten in pro hockey's first all-female goaltending matchup.

The peak came in 1995. The San Jose Rhinos and Montreal Roadrunners met in the final. San Jose won Game 1 at home. Montreal won Game 2 in front of roughly 15,000 at the Forum, with Cournoyer behind the bench, which forced a 12-minute mini-game.

Montreal tied the mini-game late. Ken Blum won it for San Jose in overtime. According to Rhinos coach Roy Sommer, it was the last championship won at the Montreal Forum.

Hall of Famers, future NHLers and a lot of minor-leaguers who'd rather play than mow lawns all summer. Bryan Trottier played. Harry York showed up to a Chicago Cheetahs tryout with $100 and a one-way ticket, made the team, and a year later was in the NHL. Glen Metropolit was sleeping in a closet next to a water heater before the Long Island Jawz called.

And one name Avalanche fans will know. Before he coached Colorado to the 2022 Stanley Cup, Jared Bednar played six games for the 1994 Anaheim Bullfrogs.

The league had real roller stars, too. Christian Skoryna finished as RHI's all-time leading scorer. And on one road trip to Detroit, two Philadelphia players stole a gurney from an ambulance and raced it through their hotel. They slept outside.

Not because nobody cared. Because the business ate itself.

Murphy later admitted that doubling to 24 teams was a mistake made for the money. Franchise fees went from about $50,000 to about $250,000, and some owners couldn't afford to finish a season. One team put PowerAde ads on its floor for an extra $10,000, and the league's national Pepsi deal, worth about $1 million a year, walked.

Bellehumeur held the puck's patent. Other founders said the league had built it together. The fight split the league office. ESPN didn't renew for 1997, and there was no 1998 season.

RHI came back for one more summer in 1999. The final was at the Pond, home of the league's best franchise. On Aug. 22, 1999, the St. Louis Vipers, a founding team, beat the Bullfrogs in front of 6,143. Skoryna said he had a gut feeling it was the last game. It was.

The last score in league history: Vipers 8, Bullfrogs 6. Six championships, five different champions. Chaotic, never predictable.

RHI vets think so, and the timeline is hard to ignore.

Whether RHI caused those changes is impossible to prove, and other leagues tried some of them too. But RHI showed what that hockey looked like first.

The people stuck around, too. Roy Sommer went from the Rhinos to the Sharks organization and became the winningest coach in AHL history. On Jan. 10, 2026, the San Jose Barracuda honored him by wearing San Jose Rhinos jerseys, more than 30 years after his roller hockey title.

The league folded.

The logos never did.

The games are gone. Most of the arenas have new names. Some teams lasted one summer. But the Bullfrogs, the Rhinos, the Vipers, the Voodoo and the rest never really left, because they were too loud and too weird to forget.

That's why we make officially licensed RHI gear. Thirty years later, those logos still hit.

Long Island JawzHome of RHI's first 100-point season.

San Jose RhinosThe night they won the Forum.

St. Louis VipersWon the last game ever played.

Vancouver VoodooHockey built for TV.

See the RHI collection

The RHI jerseys are back. Pick your team before somebody else does.

Fanhood is year-round. #HailTheFan