Dayton Gems (fictional NHL expansion team)

The Dayton Gems are a professional ice hockey team based in. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division. The team was established in 1976 in as the original incarnation of the Carolina Otters, an expansion team of the World Hockey Association (WHA). The team joined the NHL in 1979 as one of five franchises absorbed through the NHL merger with the WHA, and subsequently relocated to Dayton in 1980 as the Dayton Lynx. The team gained their current name in 2015 upon acquiring the Dayton Gems name, logos and trademarks (previously used by a International Hockey League (IHL) team that formerly played in Dayton) from the ownership of.

The Gems are currently owned by local businessmen Thomas Quinnett and Thomas Bok-Dy through their company T&T Properties L.P., who took over the team in August 2019; the NHL took over operations of the Gems franchise in mid-2017 after the previous owner,, could not find a buyer.