Port Huron Prowlers open their season at three-time champion Binghamton, with the McMorran home opener Oct. 23

PORT HURON, Mich. — The Port Huron Prowlers open the 2026-27 season this weekend in the same arena where last season ended, against the team that has knocked them out of the playoffs two years running.

The Prowlers play the Binghamton Black Bears at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Oct. 16 and 17, at Visions Veterans Memorial Arena in Binghamton, New York, according to a team series preview released Wednesday. Both games will stream free on the PHP Network YouTube channel, the team says.

Binghamton has won the Federal Prospects Hockey League’s Commissioner’s Cup three years in a row, and the Prowlers have fallen one win short of the finals in each of the last two seasons, according to the preview. The team says this group hopes to get past that last step and bring Port Huron its second Commissioner’s Cup.

Port Huron brings back 21 players who finished last season with the club, including top scorers Bobby Price, Reggie Millette and Matt Graham and five returning defensemen, the team says. Four rookies from NCAA Division III or Canadian college hockey join them: forwards Alex Gomez and Riley Sutherland, defenseman Matt Connor and goaltender Andrew MacLean, a Port Huron native. Gomez, a 6-foot-4 Colorado native with NCAA Division I experience, is among the players expected to make a pro debut this weekend.

Visas are the early worry. As of Wednesday morning, the Prowlers expected to be without Vincent Dekumbis, Arttu Heikkilä, Lukas Lacny and Blake Anderson, who are awaiting visa approval, and could be missing four more — Nick Favaro, Reid Cooper, Ryan Alexander and Sutherland — because of the same process, according to the preview. Earlier, the team said Connor Bizal, Grayson Dietrich and Garrison Gagnon had retired.

The Black Bears raised their championship banner last weekend and beat the Watertown Wolves 5-2 in their only game, with four of their five goals on the power play, the preview says. Reigning league forward of the year Ivan Bondarenko and newcomer Chance Gorman each had two goals and an assist, and reigning goaltender of the year Dominik Tmej made 15 saves.

The Prowlers’ home opener is Friday, Oct. 23, at 7:05 p.m. against the Indiana Sentinels at McMorran Place, according to the league and the team. Opening night features live music from Ryan Scott and line dancing, the team’s promotional schedule says. Port Huron then visits the Motor City Rockers on Oct. 24, the league says, before returning home Friday, Oct. 30, for a Halloween Spooktacular with the season’s first puck giveaway, trick-or-treating on the concourse and a costume contest.

Sources:
Port Huron Prowlers, “Series Preview: Picking up Where We Left Off,” news release, Oct. 14, 2026, via OurSports Central, https://www.oursportscentral.com/services/releases/series-preview-picking-up-where-we-left-off/n-6421143
Port Huron Prowlers, “Prowlers Address Players Not At Training Camp,” https://www.phprowlers.com/news/prowlers-address-players-not-at-training-camp
Port Huron Prowlers, “Promotional Schedule,” https://www.phprowlers.com/promotionalschedule
Federal Prospects Hockey League, “THE FIRST MATCHUPS: 2026-27 Home-Opening Opponents,” https://www.federalhockey.com/news/the-first-matchups-fphl-reveals-2026-27-home-openi
Photo: Oaktree b, “McMorran Place Tower Port Huron.jpg,” Aug. 23, 2019, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), cropped and color-adjusted; derivative under the same ShareAlike license, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McMorran_Place_Tower_Port_Huron.jpg

Port Huron

Tags: Port Huron · Sports · Hockey