A blast from Baton Rouge’s hockey past is returning this month as the Kingfish lace up their skates
Like many locals who lived in Baton Rouge in the late 1990s or early 2000s, Jacob Hector had fond memories of attending Kingfish games at the River Center with his family and friends.
Hockey is far from the most popular sport in the state, but when a professional team hit the ice in the Capital City, Hector and his family were all in. So much so that his dad even proposed to his stepmother on the ice at a Kingfish game one night—an evening the family captured in a photo that Hector still cherishes.
It didn’t take long before the young football fan became crazy for the Kingfish.
“The Kingfish is where [my love of hockey] sparked,” Hector tells 225. “I was always a big football guy, but I keep up with hockey and still do to this day. Back then, we didn’t have cell phones to take pictures and flash photography wasn’t allowed there, so a lot of people don’t have a lot of pictures of them at Kingfish games. That picture that we have with some of my family and Huey, the mascot, worked out perfect. It was a fun, affordable thing for a family to do in Baton Rouge.”
Once Hector heard that hockey was returning to the Capital City three years ago, it was a no-brainer for him to hop on board as one of the team’s earliest sponsors.
And it wasn’t long before Hector—who owns Tiger Nutrition, Happy Scoops Ice Cream Parlor and Badger Mechanical—was providing much more than just a patch on the jerseys.
“Next thing you know, I’m buying equipment and water bottles and [helping] the guys pay for their food,” Hector says. “It was just crazy to me to think that they weren’t being taken care of to where they didn’t even have water bottles. That just blew my mind. This is a professional sports team.”
Hector continued to get more involved over the years and, at the start of last season, spoke to the previous ownership about buying in and becoming a majority owner.
Fast-forward a few months and Hector, along with Matt Pace, Andreas Johansson and Ted Goldthorpe—who also own the Binghamton Black Bears in New York—were officially the new ownership group.
And one of their first moves after taking over was to restore the beloved Kingfish name.
“It’s what [the name] should have been in the first place,” Hector says. “It’s what everyone knows here. Tons of organizations have brought back teams all over the nation and in different leagues. I really do think that people love the name. It means a lot. It’s what people my age and a little bit older grew up on. Now it’s a cool opportunity to be able to bring the next generation and our kids to enjoy it.”
Restoring the Kingfish’s hometown connection was a focal point for Hector and his team throughout the takeover process.
The group hired Madeleine Guillory, a Lake Charles artist, to redesign the logo for a fresh, simplified look with a new color palette. Hector has also worked with Bob Hutchinson, the creator of the original Baton Rouge Kingfish logo, to plan future collaborations including a throwback logo night at one of the games.
The next course of action for Hector was assembling the team on the ice. He started with the head coach, landing on a longtime former player in Jimmy Soper to take the reins. Soper began his playing career in 2012 and most recently spent two seasons with the Knoxville Ice Bears as the team captain, appearing in 102 games while scoring 18 goals and adding 38 assists for 56 points. Hector is leaning on Soper and the ownership group’s combined experience to build the squad, but they’ve approached it with one goal in mind—to win.
“[Johansson] is the hockey guru,” Hector says. “He’s been very successful with Binghamton. They’ve won the last three years’ championships all back to back, so he knows what he’s talking about and he has a lot of hockey experience in this league as well. Jimmy is young; he’s aggressive. He was a great player, and he still has a lot of connections to a lot of players. We’ve been able to sign some of our players because they know what he’s about and they trust him. They’re taking a chance to leave a team that’s technically in a league above ours to come and play for us because they trust in what he’s doing.”
And Hector knows from firsthand experience that if you give Louisiana a winning team, they’ll give you their passionate support.
“You know how Louisiana is,” Hector says. “It doesn’t matter what the sport is—if it’s your team, you’re going to ride or die [with them], especially in Baton Rouge. We have to be successful on the ice to get the true support from the people who aren’t hockey people. As soon as we start being successful and can show that we actually care and are giving back to this organization and this community, that’s when the rest of the community that’s not die-hard hockey fans are going to come together and help us be successful.”
This article was originally published in the October 2026 issue of 225 Magazine.
