Ice Breakers happy to be back home in Mentor

The Ice Breakers have logged more than 2,500 miles on the team bus since they last played a game at Mentor Civic Ice Arena. But now they are back home, badly in need of a jump start.

The Ice Breakers, losers of nine straight and 14 of their last 15 games, host the Elmira Enforcers at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 21 and 6:30 p.m. Feb. 22.

Mentor, 14-23-0-3, sits in fourth place in the FPHL East. They will likely end up in the same slot when the regular season ends on April 4 with a road game in Elmira. They are 21 points in the standings behind third place Watertown and 21 points ahead of fifth place Delaware. The final 18 games are going to be about mounting some momentum so the Ice Breakers can be ready for the playoffs.

“This is a huge weekend for us,” Coach Iain Duncan said after practice Feb. 20 at Mentor Civic Ice Arena. “We have to make sure we come out with the positive attitude we had on Saturday night (a hard-fought 4-3 loss in Port Huron) and just continue to work.

“Everybody has to stay in their lane and do their jobs and not rely on everybody so much and work at the task at hand. If we can do that individually and collectively, we’ll be a strong group.”

The Feb. 21 game will honor the Miracle on Ice game, played 40 years earlier when the United States stunned the Soviet Union, 4-3, in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid. The U.S. went on to beat Finland to win the Gold Medal.

The Feb. 22 game is one of the biggest communityfocused promotions of the season for the Ice Breakers: Cancer Awareness Night and Teddy Bear Toss.

Ice Breakers players will wear special Cancer Awareness jerseys during the game. The jerseys will be auctioned off after the game through the LiveSource online app with proceeds going to the Scott Hamilton (Olympic skater stricken with cancer) CARES foundation.

A cancer awareness jersey signed by Hamilton will be raffled off with the winner announced before a postgame skate of 35 laps on your own skates around the rink, an event billed as the Frozen 5 Sk8toelimin8 cancer. Anyone wanting to register for the 5K skate or to make a donation should go to mysk8t.org/MentorOH2020. Anyone making a $25 donation will receive a T-shirt and admission to the 5K skate.

Raffle tickets for the Hamilton signed jersey are $10 apiece and can be purchased during pregame through the second period intermission.

Fans are encouraged to take a new stuffed animal or Teddy Bear to the game and toss it onto the ice after the Ice Breakers score their first goal. The stuffed animals will be collected and donated to the Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital.