USPHL Florida Showcase puts Premier, Elite Divisions in spotlight
By Joshua Boyd / USPHL.com, 12/12/18, 2:00PM EST
Palm trees next to Christmas trees. Sunsets fade over the Gulf of Mexico, as candle lights begin to illuminate Florida home windows.
It’s Florida at Christmastime, and this is the setting every year for the USPHL Florida Showcase. This year, the showcase will take over the Florida Hospital Center Ice facility in Wesley Chapel, outside of Tampa. Florida Hospital Center Ice is the proud home to the Tampa Bay Juniors, who are hosting the showcase for the first time after years of the event being held further south in Estero, Fla.
Beginning Friday morning, all of the USPHL Premier and Elite teams from the Southeast and Florida Divisions of each league will be joined by the Islanders Hockey Club from the Premier New England Division and the Elite North Division at the showcase.
Each game follows a format of two 25-minute halves, followed by 3v3 overtime and a three-man shootout followed by sudden death.
The Elite Division’s Carolina Eagles and host Tampa Bay Juniors kick it all off at 10 a.m. on Friday morning, and the games will continue in earnest throughout the weekend, the majority of games being played on Saturday and Sunday. The final games of the showcase on Monday afternoon are nearly concurrent games between Tampa Bay and the Charlotte Rush at 12:15 p.m. (Premier) and 12:30 p.m. (Elite).
All of the games at the showcase will be broadcast on USPHL.HockeyTV.com. As an added bonus, every game of the showcase will feature live play-by-play. It is an all-star cast of broadcasters coming to Tampa this weekend, so if you can’t be there in person, you’ll want to tune in to hear Tampa Bay’s regular broadcast team of Tyler Davey and Kevin Erlendsson, as well as the Florida Eels’ Nick Roesch and the Florida Jr. Blades’ Larry Carsi.
In addition, The Dan K Show – the USPHL’s official news, analysis and features show – will be on site Friday and Saturday featuring live interviews on their Facebook account (Facebook.com/TheDanKShow) and they will be calling the play-by-play for five games over the course of the weekend.
Stay tuned to the USPHL’s social media accounts on Facebook (@USPHL), Twitter (@USPHL) and Instagram (@USPHLHockey) all weekend long for additional video interviews, video highlights of game action and a photo gallery!
