Tier 1 junior hockey returns to Indianapolis for perhaps the final time in a long while this weekend.
How long, only Indiana Ice owner Paul Skjodt knows.
His Ice host Waterloo on Friday and Saturday nights as a best-of-five USHL Clark Cup Finals shifts to Pan Am Pavilion. There’s a cloud of uncertainty surrounding the home team, which will be dormant next season as Skjodt looks to find another place to play.
Pan Am’s Downtown rink seats 1,240, counting suites. Skjodt has made overtures in recent years about building his own rink — but he’s mum on his plans at the moment.
“I want them to enjoy all the work and the efforts, the players and the coaching staff, and we don’t want any distractions,” Skjodt said.
That leaves a team of young hockey players, 16 to 20 years old, focused on just beating the Black Hawks.
And nothing else.
“It’s about this team and this year,” said forward Joe Sullivan of Las Vegas.
Sullivan’s wrap-around goal in double overtime gave the Ice a 3-2 win at Waterloo (Iowa) on Saturday.
“I feel like with it going dormant, it’s even more reason to win,” said defenseman Michael Preston, who grew up in Carmel watching the Ice. “You don’t need more reason, but you might as well go out with a bang as champions.”
Preston and many of the players have secured college commitments so they know where they’re headed next season. But guys like Sullivan don’t know. They’ll be put in a draft for other teams to select.
While Skjodt doesn’t care for the assertion, some suspect the Ice won’t return, especially with the ECHL’s Indy Fuel making an October debut. He insists the Ice are not folding.
“It’s kind of a big question mark on hockey in Indy, what’s going to happen?” Preston said. “While it won’t affect me directly, I still think about it.”
The Ice have rallied together for the common goal, and a bit of a bunker mentality exists.
“Going dormant, it makes this an even better story,” Preston said. “We didn’t really have the best home rink, but we’re still a really good team. All these other teams have real nice facilities and it doesn’t matter.”
Forward Tyler Pham, like Preston, is headed to Army next season. The captain from Fort Collins, Col., admits he thinks every day about making the most of these final games.
“There’s no better way to end out my career than with the Clark Cup,” Pham said. “I would remember it forever.”
Ice head coach Jeff Brown met with the team last month to give players the “don’t worry about what you can’t control” speech. Brown is a former NHL veteran who knows what it’s like to live with regret from titles lost.
In 13 NHL seasons, he made the Stanley Cup Finals twice. He lost both times. He still thinks about that.
“The bottom line is we have a chance to win it all here,” Brown said. “The other stuff doesn’t matter.
“Who cares about next year right now? We all care about right now.”
Assistant coach Bernie John is a part of the Ice legacy which predates Skjodt’s USHL team. The fast-skating defenseman played from 1999 to 2004 for the professional Central Hockey League Ice, which hoisted the Miron Cup in 2000.
That team disbanded after 2004, when Skjodt brought his junior franchise to the Indiana State Fairgrounds’ Pepsi Coliseum. Skjodt’s teams didn’t make a profit but have been successful — they’ve made the playoffs in nine of the 10 years and won the Clark Cup with coach Jeff Blashill in 2009.
John reminds players to stay in the here and now.
“Coulda, shoulda, woulda does not go in your vocabulary,” he said. “It’s all must.”
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