Ice Miners Main Camp Recap
August 6, 2014 - North American Hockey League (NAHL)
Keystone Ice Miners News Release
CONNELLSVILE, PA - When Ice Miners camp concluded with Sunday's (August 3rd) All-Star Game, head coach and general manager Michael Gershon was faced with some of the toughest decisions of his NAHL coaching career. And that was after two excruciating rounds of cuts had already passed.
"This, in the three years I've been in the North American Hockey League, has been the hardest and the best camp that we've had, by far. And we thought we had a pretty good camp last year," said Gershon about the second round of cuts. "Trying to get our numbers to 42; it took us over an hour - days, to get that number down from the six teams that we had because we had so many good players."
Keystone Ice Miners main camp began on Wednesday, July 30th with over 120 players, split into six teams. The teams competed in eight games each over a span of four days, with the first cuts taking place on Friday afternoon. With the camp field still at well over 100, the next cut to 42 on Saturday night was when things got really difficult for Gershon and his staff.
"Trying to decide whether they all were ready this year and they had an opportunity or whether we should bring in a kid that we like for next year to give him an experience - it was an extremely hard decision last night (Saturday), it was an extremely hard decision today (Sunday), said Gershon. "The kids did not make our jobs easy at all and that's what we want. A lot of sleepless nights these last five days because there are so many good players here and we appreciate the effort that they gave."
The final round of camp cuts followed Sunday morning's All-Star Game in which the Gold Team, led by returning forward Austin Romzek's two goals, defeated the Columbia Team, 3-1. From there, the task was to get the roster from 42 to 31.
"The pace picked up again [in the All-Star game]. When kids see an opportunity to make the training camp roster, they pick it up even more," Gershon said. "We think that we've got a really good team. We're built from the back out. I don't believe that we've got a kid that's going to be a 100 point guy. I don't know if we want a guy like that. We want to be a four line, six defenseman team that plays really good defense, attacks with speed, and scores and wins as a team."
With main camp now in the rear-view mirror, the next step for the Ice Miners is training camp, beginning August 25th. With most of the pieces in place, Gershon and his staff will now focus on molding the team into a unit that is ready to defend its North Division Title.
I think we've got a lot of really good pieces and now it's just gonna be for these kids - how well they can come in, how well they can get along with each other and buy into the core values that we believe in. Last year the guys bought in really quickly and we had a great start, that's the same hope for this year - that we can get off to a great start as well."
The Ice Miners inaugural season at The Ice Mine will kick off this fall. Season ticket packages start at $220 for adults and are available for purchase in person at the ticket office. For more information, contact the Keystone Ice Miners office at (724) 626-4423.
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