Melbourne Whalers
Australian junior ice hockey team
The Melbourne Whalers are an Australian junior ice hockey team based in Melbourne, Victoria playing in the Australian Junior Ice Hockey League. They represent one of the two junior ice hockey teams from Victoria currently playing in the AJIHL, which is the most elite level for ice hockey at a national level for ages between 16–20 years old.
History
AJIHL
The Melbourne Blackhawks were founded 18 September 2012 following the announcement by Ice Hockey Australia of the formation of the Australian Junior Ice Hockey League. The team is controlled by the Victorian Ice Hockey Association. On 14 October 2012 it was announced that former Australian player Doug Stevenson had signed on as coach for the 2012–13 AJIHL season.
The Melbourne Blackhawks played the first ever AJIHL game against the Sydney Lightning at the Medibank Icehouse on 21 October 2012. The Blackhawks defeated the Lightning by a score of 5-3.
The first goal ever scored in the AJIHL was by Daniel Pataky of the Sydney Lightning.
The first team in club history:
For the 2012–13 AJIHL season
AJIHL expansion
The follow-up season in the Australian Junior Ice Hockey League saw a lot of change via expansion and renaming of its existing teams. The Melbourne Blackhawks were renamed the Melbourne Whalers in September 2013.
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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 Jan 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6811725. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Melbourne Whalers” 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.