The 2009 Goodall Cup has now been awarded. The Adelaide Adrenaline, replacing the defunct Avalanche, took the Australian Ice Hockey League championship from the Newcastle North Stars in an exciting final weekend.

The 2009 Australian Ice Hockey League season has certainly been an entertaining one. It was not without its dramatic moments. The League table saw one new team, but was missing two.

The 2008 season saw some serious financial trouble strike the Adelaide Avalanche, who had to pull out of the league partway through the season. The Adelaide rink ownership put in some work and created a replacement for the folded club, called the Adrenaline, and funded the entry to the 2009 AIHL season. Meanwhile the AIHL, wanting to avoid future troubles, decided to implement licensing of teams for participation in the 2009 AIHL season.

With the AIHL's decision to sell licenses to participating teams, the Central Coast Rhinos pulled out of the league for the 2009 season. The club had, however, participated in the pre-season Wilson Cup tournament, an annual event designed to help clubs prepare for the upcoming season. There the Rhinos won all three round-robin matches against AIHL clubs, defeating the Bears (5-1), Newcastle North Stars (3-2) and Sydney Ice Dogs (2-1) before losing the final match against the ice Dogs by a 2-1 score.

The Rhinos then went on to play their season in the Australian International Ice Hockey Cup, a rebel league run by the Sydney Ice Arena and Erina Ice Arena which included teams of Canadians, Americans, a mix of Europeans and finally the Central Coast Rhinos. Here the Canada Maples defeated the Rhinos in the final by a 7-4 score.

Despite this rebel circuit, the AIHL remained top-of-mind to Aussie hockey fans, and the first weekend started off what would be an extremely entertaining season for the fans. The defending-champion Newcastle North Stars quickly found themselves on a roll, while the 2007 champion Bears seemed completely outclassed in almost every match.

The 2009 season also saw a few extracurricular events included, such as a Western Australia road trip by the Melbourne Ice. The Ice took a two-game trip to Perth, centre of the West Australian Ice Hockey league, to decide if there would be a market (and a logistical possibility) of including Perth into an expanded AIHL in a future season.

Meanwhile, the Newcastle North Stars reinforced with some players from the Bears and took a two-game trip to New Zealand, where they played the Ice Blacks (New Zealand national team) in two matches as part of the New Zealand Wither Games in Dunedin. Here the Aussie squad, while not a full-strength national team but however reinforced with four import players, won the first game by a convincing 8-2 score but lost the second game in a hard-fought 5-4 historic game. This marked the first time the Ice Blacks had defeated Team Australia in any form. With the series tied at one game per side, a shootout would decide the winner and unfortunately for the Aussie side, they would go on to lose the shootout by a 2-0 score.

From there the Australian players split back into their respective clubs and tried to refocus for the upcoming Finals Weekend. In the first semifinal the Adelaide Adrenaline took a 6-1 victory over the Melbourne Ice, led by a two-goal effort from Finnish import Sami Mantere. In the other semi, the defending champion and regular season champion Newcastle North Stars earned a tough and penalty-filled match over the Gold Coast Blue Tongues. Steven Kaye scored three of the North Stars' five goals, while league scoring title winner Brad Smulders figured in on all three Blue Tongues goals, scoring one and assisting on the other two.

The two tough Saturday games were a perfect leadup to the Sunday final, and fans here were treated to a tremendous display of hockey. John Halverson scored two goals for Newcastle, while Belgian national team player Vincent Morgan and Mighty Roo Greg Oddy tallied for the Adrenaline through the first two periods. The third frame was scoreless, forcing the championship game to go to overtime. In an anti-climactic finish, Aussie national Cassian Delsar tallied just 44 seconds into the extra frame to give the Adrenaline the championship in only their first year of competition. This mirrors the 2000 AIHL season, when the Adelaide Avalanche won the league's first championship in their inaugural season. And of course the question must be asked: With two out of three Adelaide club championships coming in the clubs' first seasons of competition, what will the Adelaide side be called for 2010?