Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Facility. Logistics and location. Hotel space. A front office capable of taking on a major project.
The Rockford IceHogs could tick all of those boxes and then some, and that is why they will be hosting the 2026 AHL All-Star Classic presented by BMO next February.
“It really is, along with the Calder Cup Finals, the marquee signature event for the American Hockey League,” President and CEO Scott Howson said at a news conference held at BMO Center on Monday.
The two-day event is televised live across North America and streamed worldwide. Since it was revived in 1995, more than 94 percent of its participants have advanced to the National Hockey League. And next year’s festivities will also be a key signature point of the AHL’s 90th-anniversary season as well as the Chicago Blackhawks’ centennial.
“It’s been a long time coming,” IceHogs president of hockey operations and general manager Mark Bernard said Monday. “This is going to be a tremendous opportunity to show the rest of the league what Rockford is.”
As has been the case in some previous Olympic years, the 2026 AHL All-Star Classic will go with a Tuesday-Wednesday set-up, with the Skills Competition on February 10 AHL Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Ceremony and the All-Star Challenge on February 11. With the NHL calendar quiet during the Olympics – the men’s ice hockey tournament gets underway Feb. 11 in Milan – further attention will be given to the AHL’s annual get-together.
BMO Center, the IceHogs’ home and a building already known for its excellent sightlines, recently underwent $27 million of renovations to its infrastructure, technology, concourse and premium spaces. Scoreboard, ribbon-board, sound and lighting improvements have been among the changes. Those upgrades came as the Chicago Blackhawks purchased the IceHogs from the city of Rockford in a 2021 deal that will keep the club in town through at least 2036. The building, which opened in 1981, had already undergone more than $23 million of refurbishments in 2007 before the Blackhawks brought their AHL affiliate to Rockford.
Beyond hockey, the arena has a steady calendar that includes Disney On Ice and Cirque du Soleil in the next month alone.
“It’s been a lot of work to get the building to look this way,” BMO Center general manager Gretchen Gilmore said at Monday’s announcement. She thought back to some of the earliest informal discussions about procuring the event for Rockford in 2021. “It was a dream at that time,” she recalled, “to get the building and get us to a point where we could host an event like this. Today our dream has come true.”
The 2026 AHL All-Star Classic will be the first time that the event will take place in the Midwest since Grand Rapids hosted in 2004. With Rockford’s central location, fans in Chicago, Grand Rapids, Iowa and Milwaukee are all within relatively easy driving distance of Rockford. And direct flights are available from nearly every AHL market across the United States and Canada to O’Hare International Airport, a little more than hour’s drive away.
“Those fan bases travel really well, and hopefully those fans are interested in coming here,” Mike Peck, the team’s vice president of marketing, content and operations, said. “It’s kind of in everyone’s backyard here in the Midwest.”
Those fans – not to mention players, coaches, staff, families, VIP’s and thousands of other guests – will need a place to spend a few nights. New hotel space has been built lately, a must-have for this kind of event.
Finally comes having a good front office. Howson disclosed Monday that the IceHogs are leading the AHL in ticket revenue growth at 28 percent year-over-year.
“They’ve done a tremendous job,” IceHogs president of business operations Ryan Snider said of the front office. “They’re the ones that are really doing the heavy lift to deliver results. This event wouldn’t come off without them.”
Plenty of work remains to be done in the next 13 months before the event is a go. There will be a Rockford contingent on the ground at this year’s All-Star Classic in the Coachella Valley this Feb. 2-3. Being there will be an opportunity to get an up-close look at the logistical considerations and needs that come with hosting.
Then it will be back to Rockford and a full-speed push to February 2026. It’s a lot of extra work on top of the day-to-day work that goes into the season already, Peck acknowledged. But having spoken with colleagues across the league whose clubs have hosted before, their consensus is that the extra effort is more than worth it.
And so the AHL will come to Rockford, but the people from across the league will leave knowing what day-one employees like Peck and Bernard have long known about their city.
“The cool thing about coming to a market like Rockford,” Peck said, “is that the town will embrace it.”
Said Howson, “I can feel the energy building already.”
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
