Thunderbirds Ready to Continue Rich Hockey Tradition in Springfield

The city of Springfield, Mass., has long been recognized as the City of Firsts.It’s a city built on the foundations of innovation and resurgence, a place where countless ideas have been built, torn down and put back together in search for perfection. It’s where a gym teacher named James Naismith first introduced the world to a game he called “basket ball” and where Merriam Webster diligently penned the first American-English dictionary.

It is also within the fabric of this long, rich history that some of hockey’s earliest and strongest roots can be found. Long before they were the Thunderbirds, Springfield’s hockey team was known as the Indians, who first called Western Massachusetts home in…