Team fires coach, loses 11th straight

Iain Duncan showed up at Mentor Civic Arena early in the afternoon of Feb. 22 to prepare for a 6:30 p.m. game against Elmira and was fired as Ice Breakers head coach two hours before the game began.

Goaltending coach Sebastian Ragno and injured forward Declan Conway were behind the bench as Duncan’s replacements. It did not matter. The Ice Breakers were overwhelmed by the Enforcers, 5-0, on Cancer Awareness Night.

“I’m (ticked) off,” Duncan said in a text message during the game when asked for a response. “Nick Russo trades away players and it’s my fault. I feel sorry for the players!!! They don’t deserve this. And they don’t deserve having good players traded away ‘just because!’ He has no connection with the team. He has no idea what he’s doing!!!”

Nick Russo is in his first year as director of hockey operations for the Ice Breakers. He delivered the news to Duncan. Duncan was in his second season as head coach of Mentor’s FPHL team.

The Ice Breakers’ losing streak is now at 11 games. Dan Moon, majority owner of the Ice Breakers, said the record was the main reason he wanted to make a coaching change.

“It was a joint decision,” Moon said. “The investors and Nick got together and we talked about what needed to get done. We felt it was an appropriate time to change coaches.

“We all love Iain. There’s no doubt about that, but when you have a record like we have (14-25-0-3 after being shut out by Elmira), you need to look and say, ‘What are the issues?’ One of the issues was we needed to have somebody who could turn the team around. It wasn’t happening. None of us could see a reason it would turn around with the management we had, so we changed management.” As often happens when a coaching change is made, the Ice Breakers displayed a bolt of energy in their Feb. 22 game with the Enforcers and trailed only 1-0 after the first period. But then they reverted to getting pushed around the ice and putting very little pressure on Elmira goalie Joseph Young. The Ice Breakers managed only four shots on goal in the second period.

Along with it being Cancer Awareness Night, it was also Chuck A Bear Night. Fans were supposed to toss a stuffed animal on the ice after the first Ice Breakers goal. With nothing to celebrate, one fan tossed a stuffed animal over the glass after the final horn sounded and others followed his lead. The outcome is the same. The stuffed animals will be given to the Cleveland Children’s Clinic.

“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to pull it off tonight,” Ragno said. “I thought we had a really good first period. The score didn’t show. But I thought we had chances. In the second period, we didn’t perform at all.

“The third period, it is what it is. When you’re down, 3-0, heading into the third period after a lot of bad situations, energy is hard to get. But the first period is something we can feed off of.”

Ragno will be in charge of practice and six days to see if he can make a difference. The Ice breakers’ next game is 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28 at Mentor Civic Ice Arena against the Port Huron Prowlers.