Stockton Thunder

The Stockton Thunder are a minor league professional ice hockey team from Stockton, California. The Thunder are a member of the ECHL, and began playing in the 2005–06 season. Stockton Arena is their home ice, providing a capacity for 9,737 fans. Stockton is an affiliate team of the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League and the Bridgeport Sound Tigers of the American Hockey League. The team's most successful season to date has been the 2012-13 season when the team was the Western Conference Champions. The team also gained fame in 2013-14 as the first pro hockey team to allow fans to paint the ice and then play a regular season game on it. We Paint the Ice Night, aka the Painted Classic, was the first pro game to play on fan painted ice on January 3, 2014 against the San Francisco Bulls. Since then, the idea has been imitated or adapted by the NHL's New Jersey Devils and Minnesota Wild along with the Florida Everblades of the ECHL and the Arizona Sun Dogs of the CHL.