NOTTINGHAM was first introduced to ice hockey in 1939 – three years after the Great Britain team won the triple crown of Olympic, European and World titles.

The game had already proved popular in England and Scotland, usually among the wealthy, winter-sports lovers or Canadians studying in this country.

The souvenir brochure at the opening of the Nottingham Ice Stadium on Easter Monday, April 10, 1939, stated that Panthers would play in the National League and wear black and white jerseys.

With so few players in the country at that time, a team was brought over from Canada, had a couple of practice matches and promptly went home again on the outbreak of the Second World War.

The Ice Stadium was seconded by the local council and used as a morgue for the many dead from the German air-raids that swept across the city during those early years.

When hostilities were over, competitive ice hockey finally made its long-awaited debut in the city on November 22, 1946, with Panthers playing the Wembley Monarchs.

Coach Sandy Archer selected a team of 12 players including the legendary Les Strongman whose association with the club carried on and off until he finally returned to Canada in 2003.

Panthers — the northern-most team in a London-orientated National League — finished rock-bottom in the first year but ice hockey had arrived in Nottingham and the following season, with the arrival of 5ft 7in forward Victor 'Chick' Zamick, Panthers began to make their mark on the game in this country.

With two teams playing out of Haringay — the Racers and the Greyhounds — two at Wembley — the Lions and the Monarchs — plus the Brighton Tigers and the Earls Court Rangers, it was hardly a National League as we would know it today.

The league was trimmed down to six by 1950-51 when Panthers won their first league title under the guidance of new coach Archie Stinchcombe, one of the treble winning GB legends.

And after adding another English championship trophy to their cabinet, the league became a British competition in 1954 with 12 teams — eight of them from north of the border.

Zamick — who once beat football legend Tommy Lawton to the Nottingham Sportsman of the Year award — broke scoring record after scoring record and eventually became player-coach.

But by the time Panthers won their last British League title in 1956, under Zamick's guidance, the competition was down to just five teams and with ever-rising costs of shipping in Canadians and the governing body insisting young British players had more ice time, the writing was on the wall for the game.

And in 1960, the Ice Stadium owners decided to pull the plug on the professional game.

The sport continued, chiefly in the hot-bed North-east and Scotland, with a few exhibition games in the south and really started to gather pace once again in the late 70s, with fierce competition between the northern and southern clubs.

So, 20 years after the demise of the original Panthers, the management of the Ice Stadium finally agreed to give in to the continual requests by old-time fan Gary Keward to try out ice hockey once again.

After living for a while in Canada, Keward came back to Nottingham and with his two boys — Dwayne and Chris, hockey mad and growing fast — took a look at the nearest team . . . the Sheffield Lancers.

After a while he persuaded the team to move, virtually en bloc, 45 miles down the road to Nottingham.

All of a sudden, from playing in front of 150 family and friends, they were the big centre of attraction in a city still talking about the good days of ice hockey in the 50s.

After beating Solihull 7-4 in front of around 850 fans in that opening game, with Tony Griffiths scoring the historic first goal, the 'house full' signs went up four games later.

And this was from a side not even playing at the highest level in the country.

When word got around, many Canadians living in the country got in touch with the club and a number of Scottish players came south to see what all the fuss was about.

With Strongman, by now running a newsagents near the rink, coaching the team and led from the front by winger Dwayne Keward, Panthers went from strength to strength and the massive support and interest they generated did much to assist the newly-formed British league in clinching a massive sponsorship deal with brewing giants Heineken.

In those early years, long-established clubs like Streatham, Dundee and Durham fought for all the major titles and it wasn't until former Murrayfield player-coach, Alex Dampier, joined Panthers in 1985 that things changed.

These were the days of a maximum of three import players but Dampier recruited well, in particular bringing in stylish defenceman Terry Kurtenbach and rugged forward Jimmy Keyes and in 1986 at a tearful National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, they won the Norwich Union Cup, beating Scottish giants Fife Flyers in overtime.

Fittingly, getting that sudden-death winner was Layton Eratt — one of the Sheffield players who helped re-form the Panthers six years earlier.

Even better was to come three years later when Dampier broke with tradition and signed two import defenceman — Kurtenbach and Darren 'Doc' Durdle — and a forward, Paul Adey.

Against all the odds, they defeated Ayr in the final of the Heineken play-off championships at a packed Wembley Arena.

It was a memorable first season for Adey, who went on to surpass Zamick's scoring feats to become the club's all-time leading scorer and later coach.

With Dampier leaving to start a new dynasty at Sheffield, former NHL winger Mike Blaisdell came in to spark another Panthers resurgence, helping them win a record three Benson and Hedges Cups as the team went into the Superleague era.

Blaisdell’s Panthers teams had that aura of toughness he brought with him from his nine seasons as a rugged winger in the NHL.

And with former coach Dampier sweeping all before him at Sheffield, games between the two teams were rightly tagged “grudge matches”, with fights a regular feature of clashes between the sides.

As distasteful as it might have been to the ice hockey purist, it was — and still is — good box office and both teams thrived on the fierce rivalry.

The Superleague, officially founded in November, 1995, for the following year and with many millionaire owners staking a claim, would only enhance that Notts-Yorks rivalry - a rivalry new Panthers owner Neil Black was only quick to promote.

But with some clubs having a player budget of around £300,000 and others — notably the arena teams — stupidly prepared to fork out up to £1m, it was clear the massive disparity would eventually bring about the league’s downfall.

However, though seeming to have a stranglehold on the B&H Cup, much to the delight of Neil Black, that league title still eluded Blaisdell despite some near misses and great performances.

He was nonetheless looking forward to the opening in 2000 of the 7,000-seater National Ice Centre that would see the attendances soar beyond the previous high of only 2,800 at the old Ice Stadium and put the club on a par with the likes of Sheffield, Manchester and Newcastle.

But when he had a disagreement with management over bringing in new players, Blaisdell switched to Sheffield who had been a shadow of the team during the early years under Dampier — who duly moved back to Nottingham, later to be replaced by all-time leading scorer Adey.

Hardly surprisingly, given the enormous expense and failure by some clubs to encourage a big enough crowd base, the Superleague collapsed with much animosity.

Some of the remaining teams — with Panthers and Sheffield two of the prime movers — were quick to form the Elite League, but the governing body refused to recognise the new competition immediately.

This was hardly surprising as most of Ice Hockey UK was made up of members attached to the rival lower-level British National League, and affiliation would not be in their interests.

However, when it looked as though a BNL team might be playing out of Nottingham, the international federation banged a few heads together and the Elite League eventually got underway, initially playing some “cross-over” games with the BNL teams.

With the politics taking a back seat and despite a few hiccups along the way, with teams folding and others from the BNL coming in, the Elite League seems to have gone from strength to strength.

The league even brought over a few top-line players during the NHL lock-out in 2004-05 with three – Nick Boynton, Ian Moran and Steve McKenna – helping Adey’s Panthers to the play-off final, where they lost in overtime to Coventry.

And hand-in-hand with Britain’s senior competition has gone Panthers — just like the team did in 1946 and at the start of hockey’s great resurgence in 1982.

Apart from the barren years between 1960 and 80, Panthers have played a vital role in Nottingham’s sporting life — and with new coach Mike Ellis at the helm, things were looking up again.

His tenure started with a memorable play-off triumph at the National Ice Centre in 2007 and followed up by beating league champions Coventry in the Charity Shield at the start of season 2007-08.

It got better for Panthers with another trophy under their belts, beating old rivals Sheffield in the two-legged Challenge Cup in February, with nearly 7,000 fans watching the second game at the National Ice Centre.

But that British League title they last won in 1956 under legend Chick Zamick still proved elusive.

And with the outspoken Ellis and team owner Black not seeing eye to eye, it was inevitable another change was on the way and player-coach Corey Neilson is the new man charged with trying to end that league title drought.