Sometimes a team just has to get out-of-town, and that team often seems to come from Port Huron, MI.  When saw my first game in Port Huron, they were the Flags of the UHL.  They were the Beacons, until the team moved to Roanoke, VA for one season before folding (There was also a Port Huron Flags of the IHL in the 60s and 70s).  There was the Port Huron Ice Hawks of the short-lived NEW IHL, which was what the UHL rebranded itself as to stay alive.  That didn’t work and the Ice Hawks folded.  There was also the Port Huron Fighting Falcons of the NAHL, which is where we pick up the story.

This season, the Fighting Falcons moved to Connellsville, PA.  They are now known as the Keystone Ice Miners, the team name being the same as the youth hockey organization that resides at their rink, The Ice Mine.  That rink… well, you should see for yourself.

That doesn’t look bad, right? That doesn’t look like a rec league rink, right?

Then you step into the lobby, and the first thing you think is, this is a rec league rink.

When you walk in the front doors, to your left is the rink entrance.  Everything else looks normal for a rec rink.  Concessions, video games, skate rental.  But there’s this little dark corner to the right, directly behind where I was standing when I took this picture.  It looks spooky, like this is where you enter the surprise House of Terror that doesn’t happen to be marked with a sign and no one talks about or acknowledges exists.  Or a storage area that everyone knows to stay away from except for Bobby Jenkins, the kid down the street, who wandered in there one day and has never been the same since.  To this day, the only words he says are “cattle” and “orange-fish.”

So you know I’m going down there.

Yep, a full-scale roller skating rink.  None of this says much for what I should expect on the other half of the building.  Hockey lies beyond, though, so I must see what it has in store.

Let’s go in, shall we?  First we must get our hand stamped by a rather creepy security guard, and go through what it looks like to enter an actual ice mine.

Can someone turn on the lights?  Oh, they are on?  Oh.  Well, can I get a flash light?

What I am about to show you might scare you, especially if you only watch NHL hockey and NHL rinks.  Those with weak hearts should keep reading.  It will do you some good.  You have been warned.

Oh. My.

I think it’s important to point out that this is a general admission game, which is good since there are no seats.  There are benches, and some of them had cards taped to them, reserving them for season ticket holders.

There is also no installed sound system, so on the penalty box side of the rink, they have four plastic, self-amplified speakers set up.

And the only way for them to be heard across the ice was to make them REALLY LOUD!!! No one sat in front of them.  The national anthem was heard in the next county.

After the jump, the thing that made me laugh the most at a hockey game ever.

The teams took the ice, and immediately, you knew what was wrong.  Can you spot what’s missing?

Oh yeah!  Pucks!!  Yes, someone forgot the pucks, and an off ice person had to go get a bucket of them and dump them on the ice.  Some of the Michigan players were taking “shots” without them.  Number five for the Ice Miners saw me laughing hysterically, which made him laugh.  I’m not sure how many other people in the stands got the joke.

Speaking of people in the stands, there weren’t many of them.  The Ice Mine is not in the heart of town.  It’s in one of those areas of Pennsylvania that has houses mixed with barns, mixed with structures that are crumbling and used to hold hay.  You round the corner after fields and rolling hills and suddenly, there it is, awkward and blue in all it’s glory, the Ice Mine.  It’s not conveniently located, is what I’m saying.

The people I sat next to wer in town for the weekend to see their son play for the Ice Miners, number 20, Michael Maiden.  Mike did not have a great game.  He was minus two for the night, and on the ice for a “Too Many Men” minor, although that wasn’t his fault.  His parents told me about what was happening with his season.  He had started the preseason with a USHL team, but was the last cut for the team.  He found the Ice Miner, but the cut was, as his parents put it, messing with his head.  The USHL is a small step above the NAHL, and he thought he was safe on the team.  Mike was the final cut.  He was struggling a bit.

Once you find out about a player, once you make a personal connection of any sort, you latch on to them.  When I go to games like this, I have no rooting interest.  I tend to pull for the home team, if only to see the fans happy, to hear the goal horn, to see how the crowd reacts when the final buzzer goes off.  But now I keyed in on Mike, and he did look like he was struggling.  He had one shift where I thought he was the best player on the ice.  In general, he was good positionally, but as far as his play he was either nondescript or rough.

When I say that, the entire Ice Miners team was rough.  There wasn’t a single one of them that stood out to me.  They had some early jump in their game, but Michigan took a two goal lead into the first intermission and never looked back.  After that, the Miners were chasing the play around.  They were the smaller of the two teams, and the Warriors seemed to know better when to push a little harder, when to play a little rougher, and when to take the odd chop at the odd player.  They weren’t dirty, but they weren’t clean.

Then there is the problem with the crowd.  There wasn’t much of one, so there wasn’t a lot of cheering.  And even when there was cheering, it sounded hollow and thin in this gigantic barn.  Why was this place so big?  Why did it seem huge, even though it was only thirteen rows of benches to the back wall?  Because there is something else I haven’t told you about the ice.  It’s Olympic sized.

Let me say that again.  It’s Olympic sized ice.

And NHL rink is 200 feet long by 85 feet wide.  Olympic and international ice is 200 feet by 100 feet.  That means an added three THOUSAND square feet of ice.  Things change when you play on Olympic ice.  If you don’t believe me, ask someone who plays in the NHL and then in the Olympics.  There’s more room, it’s’ harder to get to the boards on hard wrap around shots, it’s harder to cover the points.  If you have to play an area soft, you have more area to cover.

It’s not that Olympic ice is that infrequent in the US.  When you play where you can, you take the ice you are given.  But it’s strange to see it at even this level of competition.  These kids are going from Olympic ice at home to NHL ice on the road, and they just relocated from another rink.  That has to mess with you.  It can’t be easy for them, or the coaches.  Just another interesting tidbit about this place.

OK, enough with the blah blah.  Photo time.

The Mayor dropped the first puck.  Nice of him to dress up for the occasion.  I assume he just doesn’t wear clothes regularly.

These Michigan guys are fast.

The guy right above Bloom (I know, I wish it was Boom too) looks like he can’t see what’s going on.  I’m not saying the Ice Miners were short, but…

Michigan scores.  The contrast of coach reactions in these two photos is stark.

They brought the team’s banners from Port Huron with them.  I don’t know if this is cool or sad.  Probably just a little weird.

OK, looking over my action shots, I am less than impressed with how they turned out.  Many of them are very blurry, not getting fast enough shutter speeds for hockey.  So I wish I had a lot more to show you.  Next time, I will bring a better camera (I left the DSLR in the car for this one, going with the pocket camera instead).

Here are the best of the rest.

Ice Miners at the bench after Michigan called a time out.  Note the kids in suits in the stands. Those are Miners scratches.

That was all she wrote.  The Ice Miners salute the crowd.  Final score, 4-0 Michigan.

It’s been a little while since I’ve done one of these travel posts.  Over a year and a half, in fact.  There will be more coming.  I’m starting a four-week stint in Columbus, and plan on seeing games in Wheeling, Dayton (my first Federal Hockey League game), Cleveland (go Monsters!) and hopefully Toledo and more.  Expect more dispatches.  Hockey is still everywhere. You just have to go find it.