Dashers Growing in FHL
Published on March 13, 2012 under Federal Prospects Hockey League (FPHL) News Release
They are a Midwest team in a northeast league with a bus that is fast approaching its 37th birthday and a head coach-their third of the season-who is only 26.
It may have taken a while for the Federal Hockey League's first-year Danville Dashers to get over their "growing pains" as head coach/general manager Matt McIlvane calls them but the team made progress down the stretch and won four of its last ten games.
If a .400 win percentage in those ten games does not sound like progress, consider the other numbers.
The season ended for the Dashers in Danbury, Connecticut on Sunday, March 4, 2012 with a 4-2 loss to the Whalers after leading 2-0 going into the third period. It was their 37th loss in 43 games.
Danville allowed the second highest goal total (238 in 43 games) to Akwesasne's 263 in 45 games and scored the fewest (152 goals) except for Delaware's 71 in the 19 games it played.
The Dashers also opened the season with 12 straight losses before winning the first game in franchise history on November 24, 2011 in a 6-5 shootout in Akwesasne. The team's first head coach/general manager Scott Beneke lost his job after the eighth loss.
Joe Pace Sr., the Dashers' second coach, could have lost his life in a freak accident.
Pace was on the ice running a practice in Brooklyn on November 20, 2011 following a 9-3 loss to the Aviators the night before when one of his players fell and slid into him, sending the 51-year-old coach into the air. He fell, hitting his head on the ice.
"He was out cold," said his son, Joe Pace Jr., a defenseman for the team. "It was kind of a scary situation for most of the guys but myself, I'm an EMT, Affinati's [forward Chris] been a lifeguard for eleven years so we kind of knew where to start to get him ready for the paramedics. They got there within minutes.
"After that he spent seven days in the ICU and I was there with him. He spent another three days in just general admission before they released him but, you know, it's still a battle for him, there's still things that he's fighting through, he's still got medication he's taking that's due to that. You know, he's back to normal now but like we joke, I don't think he was ever normal," said Pace Jr. with a smile before the last game of the season.
"He made a really fast recovery actually for how bad the accident was," he added.
"The team was without a coach for about three weeks and our office manager Shelley Kennedy was kind of the glue that held everything together and the players kind of maintained it and then that's about the time where I started meeting with Barry [Soskin, the team's owner] and I came in and took it over," said McIlvane who was forced to retire a week before his 26th birthday after suffering his seventh career concussion while playing for the Cincinnati Cyclones of the East Coast League in late October.
McIlvane, an eighth round pick (number 251 overall) of the Ottawa Senators in the 2004 National Hockey League entry draft, played four years at Ohio State (2004-2008). He captained the team in his senior year, earned a degree in sports management, and went on to play three years of professional hockey in the American League with brief stays in Binghamton and Peoria, in Germany with the Berlin Eis Baren (Polar Bears) where he played 14 games before injuring his ACL and in the International, Central and East Coast Leagues.
"I've had a career laden with injuries unfortunately," he said.
McIlvane arrived in Danville just in time to start a new one, taking control of the Dashers in the middle of a six-game losing streak right before Christmas and piloting them to their first victory in regulation, 6-1 at home over Danbury on New Year's Eve before an announced crowd of 293.
Asked if he was excited with the first regulation win, McIlvane said, "To be honest with you I don't really get that excited like when we win. Just like the way I've grown up. I expect it. I expect to win.
"I get more upset with a loss because of a lack of effort or breakdowns defensively, things that we work on over and over again that they're not following through with. I get more upset about a loss than I do excited about a win because I expect to win," he emphasized again.
The Dashers and their new coach had a rough January with 13 straight losses before back-to-back home victories (16-3 and 5-1) over Akwesasne in the second week of February.
Danville displayed its hard-nosed, hard-skating style of play throughout, despite the ups and downs, refusing to give up or to back down.
"There's no time to quit because the second you quit there's someone knocking on the door that wants to take your job," said McIlvane who admits to having had to learn as he goes along in his new profession.
"I haven't seen a whole lot throughout my playing career," he said, referring to long losing streaks. "It was tough for me as a first-year coach kind of going through the growing pains like trying to learn how am I supposed to handle this because I can't get mad and yell and scream because that's not teaching them. I can't put my gear on and go play for them so I had to kind of figure out how to teach and that's kind of what I did, just stay calm through the whole thing and make sure that I'm continually teaching.
"And when I figured that out we started winning and the guys started to get called up and started to have success."
The Dashers had a surprising total of seven players called up to Double A hockey this season.
One of them, Ryan Stern, a 25-year-old forward from Philadelphia scored 10 goals and had 24 assists for Danville and played four games in Cincinnati with no points. "It was my first ever time up at the Double A level so yeah, it was a good experience, learned a lot, met some good people and took a lot of positives out of it," he said.
Asked about the 12-18 hour bus rides to and from Danville, Stern said, "It's definitely been a tough year on travel. You try not to let it affect you too much but it definitely takes a toll on you physically as well as mentally. You just have to tough through it."
Like the team toughed through its schedule?
"I think that reflects a lot on our leadership, the older guys that we have on the team and definitely on our coach," said Stern. "That's pretty much been our mentality. Never say die."
Dean Yakura, who will be 27 in June, scored seven goals and had eight assists in 16 games with the Dashers and also moved up to Cincinnati where he had one assist in his first 12 games. McIlvane describes him as being "defensively responsible."
"He's such a professional, he comes to the rink every day, first guy on the ice, last guy off the ice and truly desires to get better," said the coach. "Every day comes in, asks the right questions and just wants to get better and move on. He's done so."
McIlvane takes pride in sending players to higher leagues.
"We have a little bit of mantra on our team, a stronger I makes a better we so everybody when I got here I told them I always wanted to play for coaches that were going to teach me something and I wanted to play for coaches that were going to help me move on," said McIlvane.
"So within that we want everyone here to buy into the team structure but everyone I know in pro hockey has individual goals as well so I try to help develop individuals into a product that can go on to the next level and be successful."
In order to make a successful bid to join the Federal League Soskin had to agree to pick up visiting teams and bring them to Illinois. "He wanted to be in the league and they're like well, it's a little bit too expensive for travel and he's like, hey, I want to be a part of this so bad, this is what I'm willing to do and he's done so," said McIlvane.
Another number that was trending up for the Dashers besides winning four of their last ten games and sending seven players to Double A are the attendance figures that will help pay for all that gas for the bus.
"When I got there we were getting right around 200 [fans]," said McIlvane. "We just hit 1000 last weekend," he said on the last day of the season referring to Saturday, February 25, 2012, "and we're growing a lot. Most of the time we're here, we're hitting five, six hundred, then we hit a 750, then we hit down to 650 and last weekend, we hit 1000 on Saturday night. 1000 people in the building and the place was rocking.
"Is hockey going to survive in Danville? I think as long as we work at it it will," he says.
With an owner who is truly willing to go that extra mile, a young coach who says that he truly likes all his players because they are professional and a team that overcame adversity from many different directions and started to turn the numbers around in their favor late in the season, the Danville Dashers will look to be even more precocious at two than they were at one.
Look out Federal League.
And the work that is needed to insure the survival of the franchise? Maybe somebody can wash that bus.
Federal Prospects Hockey League Stories from March 13, 2012
- Bluefins in the Playoffs - New York Bluefins
- Dashers Growing in FHL - FPHL
The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.
