Icemen ready ‘playoff mentality’ for Kelly Cup
No more missed opportunities. No more margin for error. No more playing catch-up.
It’s playoff hockey. It’s different. And after two years of postseason disappointments, Jacksonville Icemen coach Nick Luukko is confident that this year, his team is ready to surmount a frustrating hurdle.
“Once that calendar shifts into the playoff year, that level of intensity shifts,” Luukko said. “You can feel it in the last couple days in practice and in our meetings.”
For the third time in as many years, the Icemen will face off against the Florida Everblades, beginning the best-of-7 Kelly Cup hockey series at 7 p.m. Thursday inside VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena.
Jacksonville slipped to the No. 2 seed in the ECHL South Division in the season’s final weekend, matching them against the Everblades — reigning league champions from both 2022 and 2023 — rather than the Orlando Solar Bears.
There’s a common pattern of what went wrong in Jacksonville’s previous meetings with the Everblades: sloppy starts in the series.
In 2022, the Icemen went down fast, a four-game sweep. Last year, they dropped the first three games, and although they fought back to narrow the gap to 3-2, the Everblades still took them down in six.
This year, however, the Icemen have fared much better against their traditional nemesis, beating them in nine of 11 meetings in the regular season. Keep those habits going, and 2024 might turn out differently.
“It’s just that playoff hockey mentality of being hard to play against,” Luukko said. “Being hard on their skill, being hard on the forecheck.”
For Thursday and Sunday — and, if necessary, Games 6 and 7 when April turns into May — the Icemen can also ride the support of a crowd that topped the ECHL attendance rankings with 8,768 fans per game.
“They’ve got to feed off the crowd’s energy in Games 1 and 2, and roll off of it,” Luukko said.
ICEMEN-EVERBLADES: WHAT TO KNOW
Regular season: Icemen finished second in ECHL South Division (42-23-6-1, 91 points); Everblades were third (40-237-2, 89 points).
Season series: Goaltending leaders:
Jacksonville, 9-1-1.
Jacksonville, Matt Vernon (25-10-3-1, 2.67 GAA, .909 save percentage); Florida, Cam Johnson (27-15-4-4, 2.21 ERA, .921 save percentage).
Scoring leaders:
Jacksonville, Brendan Harris (21 goals, 45 assists); Florida, Oliver Chau (26 goals, 34 assists).
Game 1, at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, 7 p.m.
Game schedule:
Thursday; Game 2, at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, 3 p.m. Sunday; Game 3, in Estero, 7:30 p.m. April 24; Game 4, in Estero, 7:30 p.m. April 26; Game 5, in Estero, 7 p.m. April 27; Game 6, at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, 7 p.m. April 30; Game 7, at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, 7 p.m. May 1.