Character, work ethic keys for Ice Flyers

PENSACOLA, FLA – By all accounts, the Pensacola Ice Flyers had a successful first season as a member of the Southern Professional Hockey League. Successful that is unless you were Todd Gordon.
As general manager and head coach, Gordon’s job was to assemble a roster and guide the team to a President’s Cup championship. Even though the franchise drew just over 100,000 fans to the Pensacola Civic Center and the Ice Flyers qualified for the playoffs, losing their first round series to eventual champion Huntsville left the coach and his players feeling as if their mission had in part failed.
“I thought that with us not getting started up until August, I thought it went well. From a business side we did a lot of real good things. We got a lot of people into the rink,” Gordon said. “From the hockey side, we kind of faltered down the stretch which was disappointing but overall I thought it was a great success.”
The problems in the final part of the season, which included a 4-6 record in the team’s final games, led to a fifth place finish at 25-23-8. Offense was an issue as the squad’s 176 was sixth-worst in the regular season. The defense was middle-of-the-pack, allowing 205 goals against.
Special teams were an even bigger issue for the Ice Flyers. On the power play, Pensacola scored just 50 goals, gave up ten short-handed tallies to opponents and had the worst success percentage at 16.45. On the other side of the fence, they had the third-worst penalty kill percentage (79.55) but they did pop in eleven short-handed goals of their own.
With a much longer period of time to work this past summer,

Gordon said that he handled his recruiting of players a bit differently, focusing more on specific aspects of a player’s personality and ability.
“Character and work ethic. Recruiting-wise, this summer having the whole summer to recruit, that’s basically what I focused on,” he said. “Kids that were leaders on teams that had won in the past.”
As he began to build the roster for training camp, Gordon needed to decide whether to go with a more experienced squad or develop a squad of young but talented players. He chose to do a little bit of both, bringing back seven players from last year’s rookie-laden team – all of whom were rookies themselves a year ago – to go with a solid group of exuberant first-year kids.
“We’ve got seven guys back from last year that were all rookies last year. Everybody who tried out this year was a rookie,” Gordon said. “I want that young energy.”
Seeding a team that heavily with inexperienced players can be a bit of a gamble, especially with most of the teams in the league icing ones with pro resumes. Gordon said that it is a risk he is willing to take given what his guys have shown him in camp.
“I want us to grow as a team. We’re not going to be the best team in the league two weeksfrom now but the plan is by March that we grow together. That’s when we’ll be at our strongest,” he said. “A lot of times when you have a lot of older guys that have played in the league for a while, you get out of the gate unbelievable but that’s as good as they get. The whole plan with us is to have an aggressive, young team that progresses toward something where everybody is getting better, everybody’s part of it and we move forward that way.”
The core group of returning players includes forwards Matt Whitehead (12 goals, 24 assists), Jason Hill (6-10-16), Erik Stoyanovich (5-10-15) and Tyler Barr (2-4-6). Back on the blue line, Mark Hinz (12-17-29, 8 power play goals) and Kevin Kozlowski (3-6-9) will be leading the way. Ryan Scott is back for another season in the Pensacola net after posting a 15-17-5 record with two shutouts and a 3.28 goals against average a year ago.
Gordon said that his expectations for the core players is higher than the rookies because the second-year guys should be used to what the coach wants. He specifically singled out Whitehead and Hill as lynchpins to the Ice Flyers’ success.
“With the returning guys from last year, I expect a lot of leadership from them. As a group, they know what I’m about and what I’m expecting. They’ll lead the way for the young guys,” Gordon said. “I expect (Matt) Whitehead and Jason Hill to be the hardest workers on the team. They’ll lead by example. They should be able to be point-a-game guys and that’s what I’m expecting out of them. If your skill guys are your hardest workers, then you’re in great shape.”
When asked about the new players who will be on the rostercome Friday night, Gordon would not single out any names in particular, choosing to laud them as a unit.
“I’m really excited about all of them from a work ethic standpoint. I don’t want to single anybody out as standing out because we’ve got a group of guys who have great work ethic, great character and I think that’s what is going to carry us throughout the course of the year,” he said. “We’ve got lots of speed. We’re going to be hard to play against. We’ve got plenty of toughness and I’m excited about that.
As for the rest of the SPHL, Gordon sees improvement in every team because of a larger and better talent pool and he believes that the fans of the SPHL will reap the benefits.
“There’s been a weird trickle-down effect. There are a lot less teams in Europe this year. There are less teams at the double-A level. NHL teams, because of salary cap issues, are sending more guys down,” he said. “Players that normally you wouldn’t recruit are becoming available now because you wouldn’t think they would play here. I think as a whole, it’s going to benefit the fans because the league as a whole is going to be better.”
And if Gordon’s Ice Flyers can be better than the rest, it’ll be a very happy winter at the Hangar by the beach.
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com