AMHERST, N.Y. – The state of Washington made its presence felt throughout the week at Boys 15 Player Development Camp at the Northtown Center this summer.

From the positive energy off the ice that Jody Carpenter, the Pacific Northwest Amateur Hockey Association president, brought to camp as a team leader for Team Orange to the on-ice performances of Washington natives Levi Ellingsen (Pasco, Wash.) and Thomas Ogee (Vancouver, Wash.), it was a week of celebration for the PNAHA affiliate. 

Ellingsen starred at forward for Team Red, tallying five assists over four games, good for second-most on the team. Ogee, a defenseman, impressed for Team White, finishing second on the squad among d-men with two helpers in four contests. 

“The camp experience has been great,” said Ellingsen. “All the team leaders have been great, and it’s really good competition here.”

The team leaders are not only essential to keeping the wheels turning at USA Hockey Player Development Camps, but they lead the charge on team-building on and off the ice at camp.

While overseeing Team Orange, Carpenter’s passion was on full display all week long. Despite his status as an already prominent volunteer in his home state, this was Carpenter’s third year as a volunteer at USA Hockey Boys National Player Development Camps, and the Tri-Cities, Washington, native wants to keep coming back each summer.

“I started doing these camps trying to figure out where our players needed to be at competitively. I felt that it was important to understand where the bar is and how far we needed to go to improve as a state,” added Carpenter. “Now I come back for the sheer enjoyment of being with the best kids in America and to be around truly exceptional hockey people.”

Carpenter grew up in North Dakota before moving to Washington at 16, where he played youth hockey and eventually went on to play college hockey at Itasca Community College and Washington State University.

When Carpenter’s son started playing 8U hockey in Tri-Cities in 2012, Carpenter decided to get involved by becoming a coach.

“I had one kid in hockey, then all of a sudden I had 12. And then from there I became coaching director with the Tri-Cities Jr. Americans, and then I had 400 kids playing hockey.”

Following his time with Tri-Cities, Carpenter became a development-focused volunteer in eastern Washington and was then elected president of PNAHA in 2023. This year, he was re-elected for a second two-year term. 

Carpenter’s desire to get involved goes beyond just helping kids out on the ice.

“I feel like hockey teaches so many life lessons,” he added. “Being a good teammate, being a good person, and playing a role as a member of the team. Learning humility, and how to put the team in front of yourself is a really cool life lesson.” 

That team-first mentality is evident in his work both with PNAHA, and within the much smaller world of Boys 15 Camp. 

When asked about the work being done at PNAHA this year, Carpenter noted, “Rob Kaufman is our senior coaching director, he’s doing a great job, and Marty Rubin is our youth coaching director, and he’s making a real difference.”

Since he took over as president of the affiliate in 2023, the total number of hockey players in the state has grown by nearly 10%. Carpenter and his team are hoping to continue positively impacting hockey in Washington at every level, and Ellingsen and Ogee have been a stellar reflection of that growth. 

“Both of them being here at a national level, especially with both starting out in relatively smaller associations, to have them stay in-state and achieve at this level has been great,” added Carpenter.

Making sure the top players from the state remain in state without hurting their development has been a key point of emphasis for the PNAHA team during Carpenter’s tenure. 

“I started asking myself, ‘Why are all these kids leaving their state to get better at hockey?,” said Carpenter. “If a kid has to leave to become a better player, we are failing. If a kid stays and doesn’t reach his potential, we are failing. So we had to find a solution.”

The solution involved strengthening the competitiveness of leagues in Washington at every “rung of the development ladder”, ensuring a sound developmental environment for players from 8U all the way through 18U hockey, and it’s paying dividends, as shown by Ellingsen and Ogee’s path from youth hockey in Washington, to the Pacific District Camp, to National Camp and beyond. 

Carpenter’s hope is that more and more players continue to develop out of the Washington pipeline and into district and national-level camps, and there’s no doubt that he’ll continue to be there at the Northtown Center to welcome them each year. 

“This is truly my favorite week of the year.”

Aug. 1—ROCHESTER — Hockey has a way of finding Sam Orth, even while he lives in a country that doesn’t have an ice rink.

When Orth and his wife moved from Tennessee to her home country of Colombia a few years ago, his hockey equipment bag was among the belongings he wouldn’t — or couldn’t — leave behind.

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It wasn’t that Orth, a 2011 Byron High School graduate who played hockey for the Dodge County Wildcats program, had delusions of finding a hockey arena in the South American country. He just doesn’t get too far from bag of pads and breezers and skates. And at some point, he thought, maybe he’d find a local roller hockey team or league to connect with.

It took three days.

“With (the COVID pandemic) and inflation and all that stuff, we were living in Tennessee at the time, and we were looking at where to move to if we wanted to move,” Orth said, “and she said, ‘what about going home for a little bit, going to my mom’s for a little bit?’ And so, we sold everything and went (to Colombia), and I always bring my golf clubs and hockey bag with me.

“One day my mother-in-law said, ‘you play hockey, right?’ She said, ‘I have a person I work with, he’s a goalie, he wants you to come out and shoot around a little bit.”

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Just like that, hockey had found Sam Orth again.

That day he met the group of players who run the Colombian Ice Hockey Federation, including Eric Tyndall, a native Canadian who grew up in Winnipeg, but has been with the CIHF since 2015. Tyndall also coaches the Colombia Lightning, the country’s youth program, which includes boys and girls players through the high school level.

“He came up to me and, in English — no one spoke English — he said ‘hey, where are you from?'” Orth said “He asked if I would come out and coach the kids sometime. I said ‘sure, here’s my number. Let’s connect in the future.’ He said ‘no, I mean tomorrow.'”

Less than a week after moving to a different country — a different continent — Orth had a team to play for and a youth team to coach. Though, he quickly found, convincing kids to join a hockey team in a soccer-crazed country isn’t the easiest sell. But, Orth said, the kids who have joined the program have made his experience far better than he dreamed it could be.

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For the past two weeks, Orth was back home in southeastern Minnesota, and a half-dozen players and a couple of coaches from the Colombia Lightning U14 girls program came along.

“The two-year journey with this club has been nothing but excitement,” he said. “It’s been an uphill climb, in a good way — uphill and downhill. But the kids have been great and now they get to come to Minnesota and it’s just a boost of confidence for them to come up here and do this.”

Orth said his former Dodge County coach, Matt Erredge (now the co-head coach for the Century/John Marshall boys team), as well as Caryn Rooney, who manages the Rochester Recreation Center, were instrumental in clearing ice time for the Colombian team and connecting them with other girls teams in the area to practice with.

The Lightning have joined summer practices with the Austin High girls hockey team at Riverside Arena, and with the Rochester Century/John Marshall girls team at the Rec Center. And, for many of the Lightning players, it’s one of the first — if not the first — times they have been on ice skates.

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With no ice rinks in Colombia, the Lightning play inline hockey, similar to roller hockey, but using the same set of rules as are used in ice hockey, such as offside and icing.

“The kids are just having fun, practicing different things; it’s different than playing on RollerBlades,” Lightning coach Juan Diaz said before the team practiced with the Century/JM girls at the Rochester Recreation Center on Wednesday night. “At first, they were just trying to learn how to stop (on ice skates) with just their right leg. Now they’re trying to stop with their outside (skate blade) edge.

“… it’s difficult, it’s challenging to grow a sport in a non-traditional country, but to overcome those challenges for these kids and their parents, it’s not as difficult because they are really passionate about it. Colombia is essentially soccer and cycling, but it’s been fun to help to grow the game.”

Orth said his proudest moments as a coach have come from seeing the progress the youth players have made, as they have evolved from playing an individual game to play a team game — cycling the puck, implementing faceoff plays and forecheck systems, and working together.

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“It’s not about me, you know?” he said. “This game has given me so much, nothing but love. I just want to give it back. … It’s just really special to be a part of this. I’ll never not be. As long as they want me there, I’ll be there.”

BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Bethlehem’s largest adult ice hockey tournament is kicking off Friday along with Musikfest.

Hockey Fights MS is celebrating 20 years. The tournament was started in 2005 by Candice Arnold shortly after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Starting Aug. 1-3 and Aug. 8-10, more than 50 teams will face off at Steel Ice Center.

“I grew up here in the Lehigh Valley playing ice hockey and in 2005 I was diagnosed with MS and at the time I was a student at Muhlenberg College, and I had to do a school project, I had to shadow a small business,” Arnold told 69 News.

Instead of shadowing a business, Arnold, who grew up playing ice hockey, created a fundraiser for MS.

“I asked my professor if I could do this instead and he said yes. It was supposed to be a one-time fundraiser and it just kind of blew up from there,” Arnold explained.

Now Hockey Fights MS tournaments are played as far north as Maine to down south in Virginia.

“We’ve had some teams playing since the very first tournament so it’s pretty cool,” Arnold stated.

Steel Ice Center’s owner Keith Krem said Hockey Fights MS is the largest tournament the rink hosts.

“It’s an exciting time for us. Obviously, we’re on the southside of Bethlehem [during Musikfest] so we have a lot of moving parts that are going on here but this is a really cool opportunity for the hockey community to get down here in really one of the most exciting times to be at Steel Ice Center,” Krem said.

Dawn Reeps is a volunteer and has played in the tournament since its inception.

“It’s just a lot of fun. You get to see a lot of friends that you don’t get to see all year and obviously we get to play hockey,” Reeps said.

To date, Hockey Fights MS has raised more than $575,000 to benefit various research centers and the MS Wellness Program at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation.

The famous Alaska Pipeline stretches 800 miles, delivering vital crude oil from the edge of the Arctic Ocean to a port on the Pacific Coast. Perhaps the most unexpected talent pipeline in the century-plus history of Minnesota Gophers hockey stretches nearly 900 miles, from the Pittsburgh suburbs to the ice sheet at 3M Arena at Mariucci.

That’s where soon-to-be Gophers forward L.J. Mooney met with the media this week, skating for Team USA at the World Junior Summer Showcase, with hopes of wearing red, white and blue for the tournament in December and January.

Before that, he will be donning a maroon and gold jersey and continuing a recently-established family tradition of Steeltown relatives coming to the State of Hockey to take classes and score goals. Less than three years ago, L.J. watched his cousin, Logan Cooley, do the same.

“We’re with each other a lot. Just having him around, I’m pretty lucky,” Mooney said following a Team USA scrimmage next door at Ridder Arena.

In the summer, the cousins are at home in western Pennsylvania skating together most days. Cooley, in his lone Gophers season (2022-23), led the team in goals, assists and points, and helped them get to the brink of a sixth NCAA title before falling to Quinnipiac in overtime in the national championship game.

Blue lines and bloodlines

As an NHLer, Cooley was picked third overall by the Arizona Coyotes in 2022. He signed a pro contract after Cooley was one of three finalists for the 2023 Hobey Baker Award, given to college hockey’s top player. The Coyotes relocated after Cooley’s first pro year, in which he made the NHL’s all-rookie team, and with the Utah Mammoth he has become an on-ice leader and a fan favorite in the NHL’s newest market.

Those college and pro heroics came after Eric Cooley built an outdoor rink, with a refrigeration system, in the yard of their family’s home in West Mifflin, Pa., for his three hockey-playing boys. Their cousin, L.J., would often join the fun. As the youngest of five children, and the only boy, he was quick to learn and emulate his uber-talented relative.

“We live actually in the same yard. They’re right across from us,” said John Mooney, L.J.’s father, who played two seasons at Colorado College for former Gophers coach Brad Buetow back in the old WCHA days. “So either with the rink or with street hockey, there was something every day, all day long.”

While apples-to-apples comparisons between the cousins on-ice are inherently unfair, sisters Cathy Cooley and Donna Mooney have produced some of the same traits in their hockey-playing sons.

“They’re both very dynamic, with their edges and their compete, all of it,” said Gophers assistant coach Steve Miller, who coached Cooley on Team USA and in college, and will do the same for Mooney at the U and possibly with World Juniors this winter. “They’re both very highly competitive men. That’s where it all starts.”

Undersized, not underestimated

It has already been an exciting summer for Mooney, 18, who wore the colors of the American flag the past two seasons as a member of USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program in Michigan. While a Gophers sweater is in his immediate future, he hopes to wear what French-Canadian fans call “blau, blanc et rouge” after he was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens with their fourth round pick in June.

In his final season with the NDTP, the slightly undersized Mooney (officially listed as 5-foot-8) averaged a point per game and has made an impression both with teammates and likely future college and NHL rivals.

“He’s been a stud for a while,” said Boston University star Cole Eiserman, a first round pick of the New York Islanders in 2024. “Obviously, he’s super skilled and he went in the fourth round or whatever it was. I think he has a chip on his shoulder, for sure, being a smaller guy that can still produce.”

College programs like Ohio State, Penn State and Mercyhurst are an easy drive from Pittsburgh and are the next step down for fans in the region where Sidney Crosby and the Penguins are the kings of the rink. But for Mooney, seeing Logan at the U of M scoring goals versus the Buckeyes and Nittany Lions left a lasting impression.

Asked about choosing Minnesota, the Mooney family talks about the history, the tradition and the facilities of the storied college hockey program, but family history definitely was a factor, as well.

“You look at Minnesota through the years, what they’ve done, but I think 100 percent it would be because of Logan and the experience he had there,” John Mooney said. “That rink, the crowds they get, the first time L.J. saw it, that’s where he wanted to go. When he got the feedback from Logan, it pretty much was a no-brainer.”

The numbers game

Throughout his career, Logan wore jersey number 18. When he arrived in Minneapolis as a freshman, those digits were in use by then-junior Mason Nevers.

Using the mathematical logic that nine times two equals 18, Cooley switched to 92, and still wears that number with the Mammoth. In another nod to family tradition, with Nevers graduating and now playing pro hockey in Idaho, Mooney will wear 18 with the Gophers. He’s already played alongside a few of the incoming freshman class with Team USA and elsewhere, and the initial predictions are that in an incredibly competitive Big Ten race, Minnesota fans are going to like what they see.

“I’ve had a lot of fun playing with him. I’ve had the opportunity to play with him a few times and we’ve been linemates quite a bit. He’s obviously a super-skilled player, so all positive things,” said future Gophers forward Mason Moe, from Eden Prairie. “If you get open for him, he’ll find you, and he finds a way to get open himself, so it’s kind of just reading off each other and knowing where you’ll be.”

Mooney planned to head home after the Showcase concluded Saturday, having made his case for one of the 25 roster spots on the World Juniors team. He will ride that Pittsburgh-to-Minneapolis pipeline back to Minnesota around State Fair time, when the latest member of the family to become a Gopher will move into his campus home and take his place as the next in line with designs on hanging more banners from the arena rafters.

“By the end of August I’ll be up here for good,” Mooney said. “I look forward to it all. All this summer you keep working towards it, but I couldn’t be more excited to get up here and start playing.”

It’s not just an educational and athletic opportunity. For two Pittsburgh cousins, it’s a family tradition.

All of the 41 American players invited to Minneapolis this week to participate in the World Junior Summer Showcase have hopes of making the final Team USA roster and playing for a gold medal in January 2026.

For nine of them, the goal is to add to their precious metal collection.

They are returnees from the 2025 American team that defeated Finland in overtime in the most recent gold medal game. While Bob Motzko did not coach that team, he sees them as valuable known commodities whose contributions at the Showcase are not felt only on the rink.

“The big thing with the returning players, the nine of them, is what they’re doing off the ice, probably far more important than on the ice, because we know what they can do,” said Motzko, the Gophers’ coach who has the reins of Team USA for this go-round. “They raise the temperature when they’re around the group. They’ve shown leadership. They’ve shown great character. Their work ethic has been great.”

Motzko was chosen for the job in large part due to his track record at the helm, having led the Americans to a gold medal and a bronze medal in his previous two stints. Just as he brings invaluable experience to the position, players like Chaska native Adam Kleber feel like what they learned and what they felt last winter in Ottawa at the 2025 World Juniors is vital to pass along to the players they hope to have as teammates for 2026.

“Just standing on the blue line at the end of the tournament and singing your country’s national anthem,” said Kleber, a defenseman who will be a sophomore at Minnesota Duluth this winter. “You don’t want to be singing any other team’s national anthem, so I think that’s kind of a real motivator. Especially having the tournament in Minnesota and playing for a lot more than just a gold medal.”

Ridder Arena has been NHL scout central this week, with representatives from Anaheim to Ottawa and everywhere in between filling their notebooks and iPads with observations of the top players.

Detroit Red Wings assistant general manager Shawn Horcoff has been a particularly interested observer, not only looking for future stars to play in Motown, but having a vested interest in one particular U.S. winger.

After a solid first season of college hockey at Michigan, Will Horcoff was selected 24th overall by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2025 NHL Entry Draft, and in addition to vying for a Big Ten title with the Wolverines and a gold medal with Team USA, he’s certainly a candidate to emulate his father, who skated in more than 1,000 NHL games with the Oilers, Stars and Ducks over a 14-season pro career.

“It just shows how fast time flies. It seems like just yesterday I was watching him play,” Will Horcoff said. “It’s kind of crazy that now the roles are reversed and he’s watching me. But he has been a great guide my whole life, and he has taught me so much about how to be a player and a man.”

While Will wears maize and blue in college, his father skated for in-state rival Michigan State. So, father working for the Red Wings and son potentially playing for the rival Penguins is not an overly new dynamic in the Horcoff family.

“He won’t wear anything that says ‘Michigan’ until we win a national championship,” Will said. “So I’ve gotta do that first. A little pressure on me.”

A few sections over from where Horcoff and Michigan head coach Brandon Naurato were talking, former Chicago Blackhawks assistant coach Derek Plante — now scouting for the Ottawa Senators — watched intently as Team USA battled penalty troubles and Team Sweden on Wednesday afternoon.

His son Max, who will be a sophomore at UMD this season, has not been on the ice for the Americans due to a nagging injury. But Max played a role in Team USA’s gold medal and is widely expected to make the final 2026 roster for the Americans.

The elder Plante, who was a star for the Bulldogs and a member of the 1999 Stanley Cup champions in Dallas, said getting paid to watch hockey when your child is in the mix is a special thing.

“It gets me in the rink, anyway,” Derek said, with a smile. “I don’t have a lot of decision-making power for him, but it’s fun to watch all these games. I got to watch Max grow up, and also I’ve seen a lot of these kids grow up. I get to know a little bit more about them as a scout.”

On Team USA, Plante and Horcoff play alongside college rivals from Minnesota, Michigan State, North Dakota and other powerhouses. But with many of them having played together for Team USA at different times, there is a different kind of rivalry that plays out.

“I think it’s still just as competitive. It’s like playing against your brother every day,” Derek Plante said. “The guy you hate most to lose to is the guy that’s going to tease you every day. I think they get just as competitive.”

The last time Cole Eiserman played at 3M Arena at Mariucci, as a member of USA Hockey’s National U-18 team a few seasons ago, he heard a smattering of boos from Gophers fans. If things had gone differently, he could have been a fan favorite in Minnesota.

Eiserman was a member of Team USA’s gold medal effort last season and is coming off a monster freshman season at Boston University. Although he hails from Massachusetts, he played prep hockey at Shattuck-St. Mary’s in Faribault, and comes from a family with ties to the Twin Cities.

So it was a pleasant surprise for Gophers fans in September 2022 when, coming off scoring 56 goals in 53 games for Shattuck, Eiserman announced his commitment to play college hockey at Minnesota.

Roughly 54 weeks later, with a parent battling an illness and Cole wanting to be closer to home, he changed course and announced he would play college hockey for the Terriers instead.

He was picked by the New York Islanders in the opening round of the 2024 NHL Draft, and last season captured a Beanpot title and that WJC gold medal while helping BU reach the NCAA title game.

While dealing with a nagging minor injury, Wednesday’s loss to Sweden at Ridder was the first real game Eiserman had played since the Terriers’ loss to Western Michigan in the Frozen Four finale more than three months ago.

Interviewed by reporters on the floor of what would have been his home rink if he had stayed with his original college choice, Eiserman had nothing but praise for the Gophers.

“Great institution here. Really good school, and hockey, everything’s been top notch throughout everything,” Eiserman said. “Obviously, a little weird being back here. But they’re great people that I still talk to, and it’s good to be here, see the M, see Mariucci and a lot of memories here.”