Saturday, September 21, 2013
By Tom Williams
YOUNGSTOWN
Among the 23 players on this year’s Youngstown Phantoms roster is defenseman Matt Miller, an East Palestine native who played three games for the Phantoms last season as an affiliate player.
“It’s pretty exciting,” said Miller of being the first Mahoning Valley native to play hockey for the Phantoms. “It’s a pretty good feeling.”
Miller attended East Palestine schools through the seventh grade before moving to Pittsburgh. He played for the Pittsburgh Hornets youth program, beginning when he was 9.
“It would take about an hour to travel there for practices,” said Miller, whose older brother J.T. is a forward that was drafted by the New York Rangers in the first round of the 2011 NHL Draft.
“I’d practice and then my brother would practice,” said Matt of their early years on the ice. “It was a bit difficult” juggling school responsibilities.
Miller remembers seeing the Mahoning Valley Phantoms play at the Ice Zone when they were members of the North American Hockey League. He also saw the Youngstown SteelHounds play at the then-Chevrolet Centre when Youngstown had a Central Hockey League team.
“I was pretty young and I remembered being impressed seeing the game played that fast,” Miller said.
Phantoms head coach Anthony Noreen said Miller has been on the team’s radar for three years.
“Going back to the ’95 Futures Draft, we were going to take him with our second-round pick,” Noreen said. “But Des Moines, picking just ahead of us, took him.
“It wasn’t that we were drafting him to play right away, but we knew he was someone that we wanted for down the road.”
Miller played five games with the Buccaneers. Within the year, Des Moines traded Miller’s USHL rights to Waterloo. In July 2012, the Phantoms traded for those rights.
“We considered him to be the top defenseman with Detroit Compuware, one of the best Triple-A junior teams in the country,” Noreen said. “Then, he was undersized and raw, but he’s grown. He’s one of our bigger guys and we’re just starting to see what he can do as a player.
“We think he’s going to develop into an elite defenseman.”
Miller’s brother also played in the USHL as a member of the United States National Development Program in the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons. His final junior season was with the Plymouth Whalers of the Ontario Hockey League.
Last season, J.T. Miller played 42 games with the Connecticut Whale of the American Hockey League and 26 games with the Rangers.
During Phantoms’ training camp which ended Wednesday, Noreen said Matt Miller and Alex Carle (whose older brother Matt is a defenseman with the Tampa Bay Lightning and the 2006 Hobey Baker Award winner) have emerged as the Phantoms’ top defensive pairing.
Last season, Miller played as a Phantom for two games against Team USA and in the season finale against Chicago when Noreen called up six affiliate players to give his top players some rest before the postseason.
“That was a special opportunity to let them play in that game,” Noreen said of testing so many against another USHL team. “We knew we were going to have to rebuild on defense and Matt and Alex did not look out of place.”
Miller has grandparents who live in Salem and New Waterford. His father, Dennis, lives in Monroeville, Pa. His mother, Jennie, recently moved to Iowa to be closer to her fiance.
“My grandparents and my Dad will be at the [Covelli Centre] games,” Miller said. “I was fortunate to get traded to be closer to home — it’s a great organization.”