Breaking the Ice in Mentor

In the time I’ve been going to hockey games, I’ve been to an alphabet soup of letter leagues. NHL, IHL, AHL, ECHL, USHL, NAHL, EIHL. All actual hockey leagues that have existed at least at the time I went to them.

WELL NOW WE CAN ADD ANOTHER ONE TO THE LIST!

The FHL, short for Federal Hockey League, is a low level professional league that has existed for almost ten years now. It, along with the SPHL, or Southern Professional Hockey League, are the two professional leagues that are not directly affiliated with the NHL, in the US at least. None of the leagues outside North America are directly affiliated with the NHL.

Anyway, one of the unfortunate hallmarks of minor league sports is franchise instability. For many leagues, keeping a full roster of teams is the hardest part. The FHL is no different, with the league never having the same lineup of teams from year to year. Teams fold, teams are created, and some lose the lease to the building they play in. That being said, the Cleveland suburb of Mentor Ohio was one of the recipients of a new team this year, with the Ice Breakers taking the ice to decent success at the box office, if not the standings. Obviously Cleveland isn’t an area completely devoid of hockey, with the Monsters regularly pulling in great crowds for an AHL team (especially one in a city with multiple major league teams), however it seems that hopefully the area can support multiple professional hockey teams.

Anyway, one of the best things about lower level hockey is that it is not only cheap to get tickets, but you can be right on top of the action for less than a fraction of the price of a regular NHL game in the 300 section. For example, at the first Ice Breakers game I went to, the most expensive tickets, which include free food and getting to rub elbows with the coaches and some of the players (basically sitting in the press box) were $30. There’s been precious few times that I have been able to even get in an NHL building for less than that. Obviously the drawback is that you weren’t as close to the action, but, in the third period we kind of just walked over to the SRO section and hung out on the glass.

Obviously the quality of play isn’t exactly what you would consider NHL caliber, or AHL quality, but one of the best things about hockey particularly, and I don’t know why, is that “lower quality” hockey is still really fun to watch. I’ve seen junior hockey, where the kids can’t even drive themselves to the rink, and even local kids playing on the rink at intermission of NHL or AHL games, as well as college hockey, World Juniors, etc, and even though you can tell that they aren’t (currently) good enough to play for an NHL team, the hockey is still fun and exciting. It’s not the same with basketball, football, or baseball. I really can’t tell why.

Slam, the team's mascot, who is a prehistoric shark. That's as cool as it sounds

Ok, finally on to the actual game. The Ice Breakers were hosting the Port Huron Prowlers. Port Huron is a town in Michigan that borders Canada. The game was delayed because the Prowlers’ bus was late (another fun thing about low level hockey), but when it started the game slowly turned into a barnburner. Throughout the game Mentor had a sizable lead in shots on goal (and a lot of them were quality shots, just turned away by the goalie) but Port Huron had scored a couple to have a 2-0 lead by about the midway part of the game. A couple goals against the flow of play seemed to doom the home team.

But then, slowly but surely, the constant chipping away finally led to a breakthrough (of the ice, you could say). Near the end of the second period, Gordy Bonnel managed to finally put two pucks past the Prowlers’ netminder to tie the game at intermission. The Ice Breakers kept the pressure up, and managed to eke out a 4-3 victory, in a game with 89 shots on goal.

That was not a typo. Mentor put SIXTY-ONE shots on net, which is, and probably will be for quite some time, a franchise record. The losing goalie gave up 4 goals and still had an over 90% save percentage. That’s unheard of.

A week later we were back in Mentor for another game between the Ice Breakers and the Danville (IL) Dashers. This game happened to take place in the middle of a blizzard that dropped almost a foot of snow on the Cleveland area. Naturally, the arena was fairly crowded. Because why not? The listed attendance was 240, admittedly down from 405 for the first game, but that one wasn’t in the middle of a huge blizzard that would have closed Atlanta for a month.

The game started out slow, with no goals and not a ton of action in the first period. The action definitely picked up in the second period, with Mentor scoring 4 straight to effectively put the game out of reach, ending with a short-handed (the franchise’s first, I would later learn) that was unfortunately followed up by a PPG response by Danville.

However, the game turned into a frenzy in the third period, for all the wrong reasons. Right off the bat in the period, Brody Duncan was boarded into the...well boards, violently. Like so bad that he wasn’t moving for a few seconds on the ice. While that caused a game misconduct (as it should) and he was apparently ok to return after a little while with the trainer, but the game started getting chippy. In response, the officials decided to wildly overreact and clamp down on any ridiculous “transgression”.

For instance, an Ice Breakers player skated out of the box and to the bench for a grand total of 4 feet (the penalty boxes and benches are on the same side) and the team was called for too many men. Then, in arguing, they got an “Abuse of Officials” bench minor on top of it. I honestly didn’t know that was a thing. It would be one thing if the officiating were consistent, but later on, after an Ice Breakers breakaway (say that five times fast) was stopped, Danville’s goalie, who had given up either 5 or 6 goals by this point, takes offense to the attacker trying to get the puck for a rebound (fine) and FLINGS HIS STICK AT THE GUY’S LEGS. Like, holy cow dude, chill out. Then, one of his teammates starts trying to keep the Breaker away from his goalie by GRABBING HIM AROUND THE THROAT. Neither player got a penalty for that, but the last penalty of the game was a game misconduct for “Verbal Abuse of Officials”, apparently speaking it makes it more severe. That went to Brody Duncan, who got the same penalty as the guy who shoved him in the boards.

In spite of, or possibly due to, the absurd officiating, the Ice Breakers pulled out a pretty easy rout, winning 7-2, in a game that was pretty well decided by the second intermission.

Despite the refs trying to make themselves the center of attention, I can’t stress enough how enjoyable the games were. If you’re in the Cleveland area, or near another independent professional hockey team, I highly suggest looking into the calendar and checking out a game, I can guarantee you it will at least be entertaining (assuming you like hockey, though if not, how did you even find this blog?)