Coach's Corner and a Road Hog

It's been a crazy day in Road Warriors land today. We proudly welcomed a new member to the family with the unveiling of our new Road Hog mascot. We even got a family portrait taken!

This will be my fourth season in the ECHL (my opinion might be a bit biased) and this is by far the coolest mascot I have seen in this league. The only problem is we don't have a name for him yet. The Road Warriors are having a contest to find his name, and you can find the entry form by going to our home page.

The mascot unveiling was the big event for the first part of the day, but I also want to share with you some cool information from later in the day. Like I mentioned in yesterday's post Coach Dean Stork returned to Greenville this morning after spending a few days attending the Hartford Wolfpack's and Adirondack Phantoms' training camps. More than a handful of Road Warriors are skating in those camps and Dean was kind enough to share with me his thoughts on what he saw.

On goalie Dov Grumet-Morris:
He said that Dov looked solid in helping Hartford pick up a 3-0 exhibition win over Albany last night. Alabama-Huntsville alum Cameron Talbot started and turned aside 10 Devils shots in the first period. Dean knows Dov well from the two seasons the Harvard product played in Cincinnati where Stork was an assistant coach. He likes Grumet-Morris' wealth of experience, and leadership abilities that go along with that experience. The netminder has won two professional championships (one in the CHL and one with Cincy in the ECHL) and Coach Stork believes he will be a very strong asset to the Road Warriors.

On the forwards:
The positives that Dean highlighted were that the forwards are a skilled bunch with good quickness and hands. This is most likely going to be a youthful, and talented, group to start the season. There might be an adjustment curve to not only new teammates, but also to the pro game. With some of the more veteran presence in goal (Grumet-Morris) and in the d-corps (T.J. Reynolds) will there be a forward that steps to the forefront to provide leadership? Someone I think worth keeping an eye on is Andrew Carroll. He led Charlotte with 30 goals last season and piled up 94 penalty minutes. If he can bring that same grit and scoring to the Road Warriors it will be a huge plus. I've also heard good things about Brendan Connolly impressing the folks in Hartford with his speed. I saw him play a few times with Elmira while I was in Johnstown and he is a burner. Also watch out for Mark Voakes. He was dinged up a bit last season, but notched 50 points as a senior in 08-09 with his Canadian University team. I think he's got the potential to be a point-per-game guy at this level.

On the defense:
This group is really going to help the Road Warriors shine this season. T.J. Reynolds, to me, is the leader of this group (and maybe the whole team). He's just a hard-nosed veteran who opposing forwards will hate playing against. I wouldn't be surprised to see him take some of the younger d-men under his wing and show them the ropes a little bit. The Warriors also seem to be set with a couple of top-notch power play quarterbacks in Julien Brouillette and Wes Cunningham. Both finished top-10 (Brouillette 10th and Cunningham 6th) among ECHL defensemen in scoring. They also know how to win. Brouillette (and Checkers teammate Reynolds) helped Charlotte finish as the top regular season team in the American Conference in 09-10 while Cunningham made two straight playoff appearances with the Elmira Jackals and won an OHL Championship with Plymouth in 2007. Coach Stork believes that the Road Warriors could have the most talented and deepest pool of defensemen in the league this season. And we're not even sure yet what players we'll receive fro the affiliates.

Tomorrow is a big day folks. We'll be announcing our training camp roster along with the other players that have been signed to contracts for this season. A vast majority of the players signed by the Road Warriors are still skating in AHL camps so we won't know for certain who all will be in attendance for the start of camp until after this weekend. Stay tuned, though, because developments will be coming quickly throughout the next few days, and I'll do my best to keep you all informed.

Only 21 days until the home opener!

There's A Chill In The Air

How's it Road Warriors fans!? I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve because there is a chill in the air, and I don't mean the 65-70 degree weather we've been having lately (actually I do love that too since it reminds me of the weather back home). The chill is coming from within the BI-LO Center because the refrigeration system has been turned on and they are starting to make the ice! Check out the pictures I took:

Testing out the scoreboard and setting up the display.

Early in the morning, putting down some water.

Around lunchtime. The layer of white paint going down.

I spoke to Nikki Malpass, who is in charge of event services at the BI-LO Center, earlier this week and they are expecting to have the ice ready to skate on by Friday. Nikki, Chris Williams, Dwight Rust, Ken Luis are working their butts off to get the ice in and ready for the Warriors. If you know them or see them around the rink this season be sure to thank them for all of their hard work.

If you're unfamiliar with how ice is built at an arena it's a pretty cool process. Before any water or paint is put down the refrigeration system must be turned on at the arena. Once the system is on it works to bring the temp down and eventually freeze the concrete floor that the ice is built upon. After the concrete has cooled down enough a thin layer of water is sprayed down. Here at the BI-LO Center they used a machine that looked like something you'd use to irrigate farm crops. It looked like two short field goal uprights with wheels attached to the bottom and three spouts pointing down from what would be the crossbar. They wheeled the contraption over the floor to get a nice, even spray.

From there the white paint is put down with a sprayer. With the white painted on the rink is now ready for all of the lines and logos. This is the most tedious part of building the rink. All of the lines for the faceoff circles, the goalies' creases, goal lines, blue lines, and the center red line are painted in by hand. The ice logos, however, aren't. They are created by a graphics company and are actually made of very fine mesh. The logos will be aligned on the ice in the proper position and then tacked down at the corners with a sprayer. When everything is finally in the proper position the hose is brought out and they flood the rink and build the ice up to about 3/4 of an inch. It seems hard to believe, but that is all the thicker the ice gets.

With the ice down, all that remains is putting the glass and protective netting up as well as applying the sponsors' logos to the dasher boards. Getting the dasher ads on is pretty much just like putting really big stickers on the wall. It certainly is a lot of work to get the rink ready, and not much time remains before the home opener against Florida on October 21.

Speaking of the home opener, I'm sure many of you are wondering how the roster is shaping up as we draw ever closer to the 21st. Well fear not because the training camp rosters will be revealed this Friday. The ECHL will make a league-wide announcement of the training camp rosters at 1:00 p.m. ET on the first with the teams making their own announcements after that. You'll be able to see the full camp roster at www.greenvilleroadwarriors.com. To help fill in the gap, I'm going to have a post tomorrow featuring a conversation with Coach Dean Stork. Coach Stork has spent the last few days in Hartford and Glenns Falls taking in some of the Wolfpack's and Phantoms' training camps. A bunch of our players were taking part in those camps so it will be interesting to get his thoughts on what he observed.

Until then keep thinking cool thoughts because the start of the season will be here before we know it!

AHL Camps Are Open

Happy Saturday Road Warriors fans. Hopefully you're all enjoying some college football this afternoon. I'm a bit nervous at the moment as my Nittany Lions trail Temple 13-6 in the second quarter. PSU hasn't lost to Temple in centuries so I'm hoping they turn things around soon.

Time to end the pity party and get to what's really important and that is we're getting ever-closer to our training camp opening. With October drawing near our affiliate in Hartford has officially opened training camp, and many of this year's Adirondack Phantoms are getting work in Flyers camp in Vorhees, New Jersey. The Road Warriors will be making an official announcement on training camp in the near future, but until then I wanted to share a few links with you in order to keep up to speed with our affiliates.

This site is a great resource for info on the Wolfpack, and this is the site for the Phantoms' beat writer. Of course you should check out the home pages for the Wolfpack and Phantoms, as well.

There are a few announced Road Warriors players who have landed in Hartford's camp and they are: Dov Grumet-Morris (G), Brendan Connolly (F), and Mark Voakes (F). With Chad Johnson's expected arrival from the Rangers in the near future it will be interesting to watch how Hartford's goaltending battle plays out. Johnson is pegged as the starter to begin this season which leaves Grumet-Morris to battle it out with Cameron Talbot and Jordan Parise for the back up spot. Certainly a lot of intrigue there, and that's without even touching on Adirondack's goalie situation.

This is a fun time of the year for hockey fans with all the speculation of how the team's season-opening roster will shape up. I hope you'll all follow along closely, both here and at our affiliates' pages, as the pieces to the Road Warriors puzzle begin to fall into place.

And So It Begins...

HELLO HOCKEY FANS!!!

Welcome one and all to the official blog of your Greenville Road Warriors. This is Radio Ray checking in with my inaugural post. Preparations are in full swing for the Road Warriors first season in the ECHL, and I can't tell you all how mind boggling it is that the summer is already gone and we're less than one month away from the start of hockey season. It feels like all of the days since I first arrived in Greenville on May 1 have gone by in the blink of an eye, and now we're just about two weeks away from the players beginning to arrive for training camp. October 21 is going to be here before any of us know it and we'll be off and running, or skating as it were.

(You might want to get used to the corny puns. I'm full of them.)

So now that you've found the blog here in its little corner of cyberspace you may be asking yourself, "Self, what can I expect to find in Radio Ray's blog?" That is an excellent question. What you will find here throughout the season is unparalleled access to your Road Warriors. As the team's broadcaster I have the privilege of traveling with the team throughout the season; I'll be on every bus trip (long or short), taking in practices, and talking with the coaches and players on a daily basis. With that kind of access I'll be able to bring you things like monthly player features, Hockey 101, game previews and recaps, affiliate reports, exclusive videos and photos, and much more. Just think of it as a superstore for Road Warriors information.

In the coming weeks I'll be providing you all with updates on goings-on in our NHL and AHL affiliates' training camps, helping you get to know some of the players we've already signed, and giving you some behind the scenes looks at the BI-LO Center as it gets ready for hockey season. ***SPOILER ALERT*** The ice is supposed to be going down next week, so that's one of the things to get excited for.

Now it is a long season and in the interest of keeping things fresh, I won't be the only person writing in this space. There are a ton of people within this organization who have interesting things to write about and you can expect guest appearance from Coach Stork, Road Warriors players, team President and General Manager Neal Smith, among others.

So stay tuned because there's great things on the horizon for this blog. You certainly won't want to miss it! Until next time, though, take care.