Williams: Valley tie to NHL Cup on deck
Later this year, it appears a hockey player with ties to the Mahoning Valley will get his name engraved on the Stanley Cup.
The four teams still alive in the NHL Playoffs each have one player with a Northeast Ohio connection. They are: JT Miller, New York Rangers; Brandon Saad, Chicago Blackhawks; Andrej Sustr, Tampa Bay Lightning; and Jiri Sekac, Anaheim Ducks.
To get your name on the Cup, a player on the winning team must either play at least one game in the Stanley Cup Final or 41 games in the 82-game regular season.
Miller, a center, grew up in East Palestine. His parents drove him to Pittsburgh to learn hockey. When he was in junior high, his family moved to Coraopolis, Pa., and he played for the Pittsburgh Hornets. In 2009, he joined the United States National Team Development Program and played two seasons with Team USA.
In the 2011 NHL Draft, Miller, now 22, was drafted 15th overall by the Rangers. That’s right, a kid from Columbiana County was a first-round pick in the NHL. That fall, he joined the Plymouth Whalers of the Ontario Hockey League, Canada’s major junior program. By season’s end, he was playing for the Rangers’ AHL affiliate, the Connecticut Whale, for the Calder Cup Playoffs.
After the NHL lockout ended in January 2013, Miller played 26 games with the Rangers. The next season, he split time between the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack (41 games) and Rangers (30 games). He played 58 games for the Rangers this season, scoring 10 goals and making 13 assists.
Miller’s brother Matt has been a defenseman with the USHL’s Youngstown Phantoms for the past two seasons.
Saad, 23, was also taken in the 2011 draft with the 43rd overall selection (second round). When he was 16, Saad played with the Mahoning Valley Phantoms in their final season in the North American Hockey League, a level below the USHL.
Saad’s name is already on the Cup. A rookie-of-the-year candidate in the NHL lockout-shortened 2013 season, Saad helped the Blackhawks win their second championship in four seasons.
Saad spends most of his time on the Blackhawks’ top line with Jonathan Toews and Marian Hossa. He’s blossoming into one of the NHL’s top forwards — why the Pittsburgh Penguins passed on him is an excellent mystery.
Sustr, 24, and Sekac, 22, are from the Czech Republic and competing to be the first Youngstown Phantom to get his name on the Cup. They were teammates on the first Phantoms team (2009-10) after owner Bruce Zoldan folded the Mahoning Valley Phantoms to create his USHL team.
Sustr, a 6-foot-8 defenseman, played one season in Youngstown then played three years at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Undrafted, he signed a free-agent deal with the Lightning in 2013. This season, Sustr played in 72 games.
Sekac also went undrafted. He spent two seasons in Youngstown then returned to Europe to play in the Kontinental Hockey League and Czech Extraglia. In 2014, the Montreal Canadiens signed Sekac to a free-agent deal. In January, he was one of the NHL’s four Future Stars at All-Star Weekend in Columbus.
After playing 50 games for the Canadiens, he was traded to the Ducks. At the start of the Western Conference Finals series against the Blackhawks, Sekac was inserted into the lineup for his speed. He’s playing on the fourth line.
That series has to sting Pens fans watching, in that the two best players on each team (Toews and Patrick Kane on Chicago, Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry on the Ducks) are earning their hefty paychecks when it counts the most. Pittsburgh’s dynamic duo of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin haven’t delivered in the clutch in six postseasons.
Tom Williams is a sportswriter at The Vindicator. Write him at williams@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @Williams_Vindy.