After completing the weekend sweep over the Northeast Generals, six of the Rebels’ players hurried home to get a good night’s sleep. Dom Garcia, Gvido Jansons, Jack Leavy, Andrew Noel, Evgeny Yakovlev and I had an early Sunday morning flight to Detroit, MI to compete in the NAHL’s Top Prospects Tournament. We all met Coach Coombs at the Philadelphia airport at 8:30am. Getting through the airport was a breeze compared to the trip to Alaska with 25 guys. We were able to make it through security with enough time to get some breakfast and have some down time at our gate. When we got to the gate we ran into the players from the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Knights who will be our teammates for the next couple of days.
The hour and a half flight passed quickly, and we arrived in Detroit around noon. Upon our arrival, there was a bus waiting to pick us up and bring us to the hotel. Our hotel is in Ann Arbor which is the home of the University of Michigan, and it is located about 15 minutes away from USA Hockey Arena where we will be playing our games.
After getting to the hotel we were given the rest of the day to rest with only dinner on our itinerary. There were tons of players from all over the league wandering throughout the hotel. We took the time to meet and get to know some of the other players on our team that we are used to playing against. After dinner we all went off into our separate rooms to wind down for the night to prepare for our first of two games on Monday evening. Our East Division team will be playing Gvido Jansons and the NAHL Selects team at 4:00pm.
