AHL Grand Rapids Griffins

Local youth players to participate in AHL All-Star Skills Competition

Published on February 6, 2004 under American Hockey League (AHL)
Grand Rapids Griffins News Release


Grand Rapids, Mich. - When the American Hockey League's top players compete in the 2004 AHL All-Star Skills Competition at Van Andel Arena this Sunday, February 8, two Grand Rapids-area youth hockey players will help decide whether the PlanetUSA or Canadian squad is crowned champion of the evening.

Fourteen-year-olds Morgan Feenie of Grand Rapids and Brad Beilstein of Grandville, teammates on the Grand Rapids Griffins Bantam AA team, will participate in two of the Skills Competition's seven events.

Morgan, representing the Canadian AHL All-Stars, and Brad, a member of the PlanetUSA All-Stars, will compete head-to-head in the CCM Fastest Skater and Pepsi Accuracy Shooting competitions, with their results counting in the overall scoring for each team.

In the CCM Fastest Skater event, each player will start from a standing position, three feet from the center red line on opposite sides of the ice surface. They will simultaneously skate one complete revolution around the rink counterclockwise, finishing at the red line. The winner, determined by an electronic eye that records time in thousandths of a second, will earn one goal for his team, accounting for one-third of the total scoring in the event.

For the Pepsi Accuracy Shooting contest, four destructible foam targets 15 inches in diameter will be attached to the goal posts, one in each corner. Each boy will be positioned 25 feet from the goal line, and will alternately receive passes from an AHL All-Star positioned on either side of the goal.

He will have a maximum of 18 seconds to shoot up to eight pucks in an attempt to hit each of the four targets. The player recording the most hits in the fewest attempts will earn one goal for his team, again comprising one-third of the event's scoring.

Morgan and Brad will become part of an AHL All-Star tradition, as youth hockey players first took part in the Skills Competition during the 1999 AHL All-Star Classic in Philadelphia.

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American Hockey League Stories from February 6, 2004


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