{"id":3058,"date":"2019-09-28T23:55:02","date_gmt":"2019-09-29T03:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=3058"},"modified":"2019-09-28T23:55:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-29T03:55:18","slug":"mens-ice-hockey-to-open-inaugural-home-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/09\/28\/mens-ice-hockey-to-open-inaugural-home-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Men\u2019s Ice Hockey to Open Inaugural Home Season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The all-new Florida Southern College\nmen’s ice hockey team faced off against the University of South Florida\nSaturday at the Lakeland Ice Arena in the team’s first home contest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This\nSaturday’s matchup will be the first of 16 home games in the team’s inaugural\nseason. In addition, Florida Southern will also host the Moccasin Invitational\non Dec. 6-8 at the Lakeland Ice Arena, with The Citadel, Flagler, and USF also\ncompeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“As\na first-year program, we feel very fortunate to be able to host as many games\nas we are at home,” Richard said. “Lakeland Ice Arena is a beautiful\nfacility, and our initial open skates have been full of energy. Our team will\nbe very exciting to watch this year.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the Mocs lost 1-0 to\nUSF Bulls<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Logan Cody had 37 saves in the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here<\/a> for some photos of the game and crowd <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nteam’s full schedule can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nprogram is led by Gilles Richard, who was named the head coach last month. A\nnative of Moncton, New Brunswick, he has been involved in hockey in the United\nStates as a player, coach, general manager, or director for nearly three\ndecades. In addition to his role as the head coach for the Moccasins, Richard\ncurrently serves as the Director of Hockey Operations at Lakeland Ice Arena as\nwell as the Vice President of Hockey Operations for Southeast Elite Hockey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\na player, Richard played in five different professional leagues including the\nSunshine Hockey League, Southern Hockey League, ECHL, ACHL, and World Hockey\nAssociation. Over the course of three seasons with the Jacksonville Bullets\n(1993-96), Richard played in 165 games, tallying 25 goals, 124 assists, and 543\npenalty minutes as a defenseman. He also played professionally with the\nJacksonville Lizard Kings, Jacksonville Barracudas, and Orlando Seals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nJune, the team was been granted membership into the American\nCollegiate Hockey Association<\/a> (ACHA), the national governing\nbody of non-NCAA ice hockey. Florida Southern will play in the ACHA Division\nIII classification in the South Division. The Moccasins are joined by\nEmbry-Riddle, Eastern Florida State College, University of Florida, Florida\nAtlantic, Florida Gulf Coast, Florida Tech, Florida State, Lynn, UCF, Miami,\nand USF as the ACHA’s member institutions in the state of Florida. Florida Gulf\nCoast also fields a team at the Division II level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nACHA’s Division III South Division also includes teams from the states of\nAlabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and\nAmerican University in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida\nSouthern will play its home contests at the Lakeland Ice Arena which is located\non West Memorial Boulevard in Lakeland at the site of the former Interstate\nLanes bowling facility. All Moccasin ice hockey contests are open to the public\nand free of charge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The all-new Florida Southern College men’s ice hockey team faced off against the University of South Florida Saturday at the Lakeland Ice Arena in the team’s first home contest.  This… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}