Aces Over Brooklyn: Independent Brooklyn Aces Coverage

Saying that last season was a tough one to swallow for Rob Miller would be an understatement.

After the New Hampshire Freeze, the team Miller was supposed to coach, folded, the 30-year-old came out of retirement to play defense for the Brooklyn Aces. Just when things looked to be going his way, Miller suffered a broken hand after a vicious slash by Hudson Valley Bears forward Tom Westfall.

Over the next two and a half months, Miller served as the Aces assistant coach, before coming back to the team for their playoff push. In spite of playing some of the best hockey of his pro career during that stretch and earned player of the week honors for the last week of the season. The team couldn’t hold off the surging Jersey Rockhoppers in spite of having their hard-nosed captain back however and lost an EPHL championship that many felt they owned since the first week of the season.

Sorry for the lack of content lately guys, between writing for my new site, ReviewFix.com, teaching and the NBA and NHL drafts, I’ve been hard pressed for time.

However, the next few weeks will be good ones on the site as I still have to finish up the rest of my Rob Miller piece and I have interviews this week with former Aces BJ Kuper, Eric Frank and Aces head coach Chris Firriolo.

There are also a myriad of rumors circulating around the Internet in regards to where the Aces are playing next season and how the expansion process is coming along. Hopefully, through these interviews over the next few weeks, the answers to those questions will be apparent ones.

Also during that time, if anyone has any player that they’d like me to interview or anything they’d like me to shed some light on, I’ll be accepting questions all week. If I get enough, I’ll post a piece where I answer all of them. If it works out, I’ll create another segment on the site and we can have it up regularly. Just make sure you give me your name so I can give you credit.

Here is the final part of the nearly half-hour Q & A done with Riggs on June 1.

Aces Over Brooklyn: What are looking forward to doing in year two?

Jim Riggs: There’s work to be done, there’s no mistaking that. The sooner we can announce these teams, then we have July and August to sell the product and the players that played last season will know that things are stable and they’ll come back as well. They are our best recruiting tool. When they go back home, if they had a good experience and I would hope the Brooklyn and New Jersey players had a good experience, certainly the way the playoffs went, they’re going to tell people that we’re a decent place to play. We’re telling the people in New England that there are a lot of players from that area and if they don’t make the American Hockey League and the ECHL, what are they doing right now? They’re probably going to start a full-time job. We think we can offer the same type of situation that Brian Gratz and Chris Firriolo did recruiting players from the area that will be more than happy to play because their friends and family are in the area. We also know that there are scouts at our games last year.

Aces Over Brooklyn- What is the situation with the Hudson Valley Bears? Are they finished?

Jim Riggs- They are not finished. We are currently looking for another ownership group for them. It was no secret that it was a league-run team last year. We think that it is better for everyone involved if that team has local ownership that really focuses on marketing the product in that area. There’s a minor league baseball team that plays there, the Hudson Valley Renegades and we hope that whoever takes over the team uses them as a model and take this team and run with it. They can provide great family entertainment that is affordable and we know for sure that the Newburgh building is willing to put in addition seating if the right ownership group surfaces.

So finding a new ownership group for this team is another one of our projects that we are working on. We really want them to be one of the teams that returns and does there own thing like the other teams did last season.

I had the luxury of chatting via-telephone with EPHL Commissioner Jim Riggs this past Wednesday and for nearly a half hour, we discussed what’s in store for the league.

Here’s the first part of that interview, with the next part to follow sometime during the upcoming week.

Aces Over Brooklyn- What is going on in terms of the expansion process the league is involved in?

Jim Riggs- Well, it’s actually a couple of things. First of all, we finished the year with four teams and we’ve been telling people that we’re going into the new season with at least four teams and maybe more. That is what we’ve been truly working on since the end of the regular season. The process, I will admit, has been slower than we would have liked, but I think we are dealing with something that no other minor league has to deal with.

AOB- What kind of things?

Much like the interview I did with Chris Holmes a few weeks ago, here are a few snippets from a phone interview I conducted with Aces captain Rob Miller yesterday that won’t be making it into my piece.

The full article, which will focus on Miller’s season and what the future holds for him, will be up sometime next week.

Aces Over Brooklyn- From your point of view, as a player and a coach, was there anything that you would have done differently from coach Firriolo in the EPHL finals against the Jersey Rockhoppers?

Rob Miller- I would have matched lines more. [Chris] Ferazzoli wouldn’t have had the time to do some of the things that he did. He was obviously the MVP of that series. Take a look at the NHL finals, [Sydney] Crosby didn’t do anything last night because of the way he was matched up. In the end, it may not have worked out well for us, but it may of have as well. You never know. That’s something I would have done for sure though. If they didn’t have Ferazzoli, that series would have been over in two [games], no question, everybody knows that. He’s a good player and if he has space to do things, he’ll do it and that’s what he did. That’s pretty much the only thing I would have done if I was in that situation.