Guildford Flames
ice hockey team based in Guildford, Surrey, England
The Guildford Flames are a professional ice hockey team based in Guildford, Surrey. They play their home games in the Guildford Spectrum and compete in the top-tier of hockey in the United Kingdom, the Elite Ice Hockey League.
Founded in October 1992, the Flames originally played in the second-tier leagues of British hockey, first the British National League until 2004, and subsequently the English Premier Ice Hockey League until 2017. On 24 February 2017 it was announced that the Flames would become the 12th Elite Ice Hockey League team, joining from the 2017–18 season.
The team's head coach is Paul Dixon, who took over after Stan Marple retired in 2007.
Formation
Barry Dow, an American who sponsored and owned the basketball team Guildford Kings and Bill Hurley established and owned the team as management – the two were new to the sport of ice hockey, and brought in Mike Urquhart as coach and Darrin Zinger as captain.
Key players signed for the first season included Canadians Sean Murphy and Dave McGahan due to their high scoring at Solent Vikings. In addition a number of British players including goaltender, Mike Kellond; forward, Danny O'Hanlon and defender, Gary Shearer.
The Flames' inaugural season began in October 1992; they began, unseeded, in the English League Division One. With the Guildford Spectrum not yet completed, the team had to train at Slough's facility.
The public source identifies “Guildford Flames” as ice hockey team based in Guildford, Surrey, England. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Guildford, Flames and hockey.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2791584. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 2004, 2017 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Guildford Flames” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.