After a 17-year hiatus following the Edmonton Oil Kings’ move to Billings, Montana in 1979, WHL hockey returned in 1996 as the Edmonton ICE became the newest tenants at the Northlands AgriCom. Dave Siciliano was named the team’s first head coach in January, following a successful run in the United States Hockey League as the head coach, and later the general manager, of the Thunder Bay Flyers. Siciliano parlayed four Anderson Cup regular-season titles, two Clark Cup playoff crowns and two Canadian Junior “A” Centennial Cup championships into a solid start in Edmonton, winning all of their first three games. John Kachur scored all three game-winners on the way to a team-best 82 points, but the team slipped back to .500 by the end of the season’s first month, and won just one game in a 23-game stretch before mid-December.
A 14-56-2 finish in 1996-97, an 0-9-1 start to the 1997-98 schedule, and 31 one-goal losses in that span spelled an early end to the Siciliano era in Edmonton, and assistant coach Ryan McGill would take over the reins in late October. The finish to the ’97-’98 season was only a slight improvement from the previous year, at 17-49-6. The stay in Edmonton was a brief one – after only two years in town, the team packed up and headed southwest to Cranbrook, British Columbia ahead of the 1998-99 season.