The Albany FireWolves are on the move, but they’ll have a familiar name for at least one season.
The National Lacrosse League announced on Tuesday, August 19, that its board of governors had approved the FireWolves’ relocation to Oshawa, Ontario, in time for the start of the 2025-26 season. They’ll play out of the Tribute Communities Centre (formerly the General Motors Centre), a 5,180-seat arena that’s also home to the Ontario Hockey League’s Oshawa Generals.
The league said in its announcement that the FireWolves “will retain their name for the upcoming season, with more details on branding and community initiatives to be announced in the coming weeks.”
The announcement comes less than three weeks before the 2025 NLL Draft, scheduled for Saturday, September 6. The FireWolves will be the second NLL team in the Greater Toronto Area, joining the Toronto Rock, who play out of the TD Coliseum in Hamilton.
“This is a pivotal moment for our league and for the FireWolves franchise,” NLL Commissioner Brett Frood said in a press release. “Oshawa sits within one of the core epicenters of the indoor lacrosse world in Ontario, and the Tribute Communities Centre provides the perfect stage for us to deliver an incredible experience for all NLL constituents. The energy and passion of the sports’ fans in this area make this an ideal home for the franchise and our league.”
According to sources cited in the Times-Union, a newspaper covering the Albany region, the main reasons for the relocation were the lack of direct flights from Toronto to Albany for players and high workers’ compensation insurance fees in New York state.
The FireWolves franchise started in 1987 as the Philadelphia Wings, one of the NLL’s original four teams. The Wings stayed in Philadelphia until 2014, when they moved to Uncasville, Connecticut, and were rebranded as the New England Black Wolves. (The Wings were resurrected as an expansion franchise in 2018.) They then moved to Albany and became the FireWolves in 2021.
Albany had previously been home to an NLL franchise, the Albany Attack, from 2000 to 2003. That team moved to San Jose in 2004 and were renamed the San Jose Stealth.
The 2025-26 NLL regular season schedule hasn’t yet been announced, but typically begins in late November or early December each year.
