Ice Dogs Look to Finish What They Started

Not too many things went wrong for the Long Beach Ice Dogs last season.

In the franchise’s first season at the Long Beach Arena, the Ice Dogs skated to the best home record in the International Hockey League with 32 victories, which included a 19-game winning streak.

They scored a whopping 309 goals and led the league with 106 power-play scores. They easily won the Southwest Division title and lost only one playoff game en route to winning the Western Conference championship.

The only negative was their failure to win the Turner Cup, losing to the Detroit Vipers in the championship series, four games to two.

This season, the Ice Dogs are determined to finish the job and begin their quest tonight when they travel to play the Las Vegas Thunder.

“This is an exciting time for us,” said defenseman Dan Lambert, who will begin his third season as team captain. “The core of [last season’s] team is still the same, with an addition of some new players. It’s going to be interesting to see how the pieces fit in.”

The Ice Dogs, who will play their first home games Saturday at 7 p.m. against Utah and Sunday at 4 against Chicago, have reason to believe that they are even better this season. General Manager-Coach John Van Boxmeer made several moves during the off-season to get bigger on defense and added youth to the team’s depth.

Van Boxmeer brought in defensemen Denis Tsygurov, Joby Messier and Collin Bauer and will rely on goaltender in Kay Whitmore, a former starter for the Vancouver Canucks who played with the Ice Dogs in Los Angeles.

The Ice Dogs say that Tsygurov, the talented former first-round draft choice of the Buffalo Sabres, could be the best defenseman in the IHL.

Tsygurov is a former King who played last season in the Czech Republic and Russia.

The Ice Dogs will also have defenseman Steven Finn, who along with winger Dan Bylsma are property of the Kings, Long Beach’s new NHL affiliate.

Offensively, the Ice Dogs may not start out the way they finished last season but they do have the potential to improve. Stephane Morin, who led the team with 91 points, is back and so is Patrik Augusta, who led the team with 45 goals.

They will be joined up front by John Byce, who led the Ice Dogs with 13 power-play goals last season; Victor Ignatjev, who had a career-high 69 points last season with the Ice Dogs and tried out with Tampa Bay of the NHL during training camp, and Andrei Vasilyev, who played for Utah in the IHL last season.

Long Beach should also be better at killing penalties with the addition of Bylsma, one of the Kings’ top defensive forwards last season.

“We had a lot of pressure on us last year at the start [of last season] because we were coming off a bad experience [losing at the L.A. Sports Arena] and didn’t know how things would be in Long Beach,” Lambert said. “But since Barry Kemp took over [as owner] and showed that he is not afraid to go out and get players, the franchise is very solid here.”

IHL Note

Gordie Howe, 69, will skate one shift for the Vipers in their opener tonight against the Kansas City Blades and become the first professional hockey player to play in six decades.