For Andy Miele and Aaron Ness, the last couple of seasons have been filled with what-ifs.
What if the 2019-20 American Hockey League season hadn’t been shut down by the pandemic, pushing Miele — one of the Tucson Roadrunners’ leading scorers — to take his game overseas? Despite still having a year left on his two-way NHL deal with the Arizona Coyotes, Miele elected to play in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League rather than risk another AHL cancellation.
And what would it have mean for Ness if the NHL hadn’t needed taxi squads a year ago? Ness was a staple on the Coyotes’ taxi squad last season after splitting the previous season between the Roadrunners and the NHL club. But Ness only saw action in one game last season, biding his time as a fill-in player as the pandemic marched on.
Questions like those, at least for Miele and Ness, faded a bit over the last week. The former Roadrunners will represent the United States in the Winter Olympics, which start next month.
“It hasn’t really hit yet even," Ness said after the rosters were announced last week. “The Olympics is something so huge, so big, you can’t even wrap your head around it.”
Miele, a veteran of seven AHL seasons, 15 scattered NHL appearances and an additional five seasons overseas, said the “honor to wear the USA jersey” makes up for a lot of the hockey-specific uncertainties of recent years.
“My grandfather fought in World War II and the Korean war, and he represented this country in the highest honor possible,” Miele told the Star this week from Russia, where he’s put up 13 goals and 36 points in 47 games for the KHL’s Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod. “For me to be able to (represent the U.S.) in this way makes me very proud, and I know how proud he would be.”
One of Tucson’s top offensive weapons with 15 goals and 48 points prior to the March 2020 AHL shutdown, Miele has worn Team USA’s red, white and blue twice earlier in his career. He played in the 2011 and 2014 world championships.
“When I first got the call out of my senior year of college to represent USA, it was like a little kid in a candy shop. There’s just so much excitement and its early in your career, so you think those opportunities are normal and they happen a lot,” he said. “And, you know, time goes by, and you start to realize, ‘Well, wow, it’s not an every-year thing that you get to represent your country.’
“Fortunately for me, it happened again."
Ness said last year wasn’t easy, given that he spent all season on the NHL taxi squad and only saw action in one game.
“You just keep putting your head down, keep working, you hope good things will happen,” he said. “And it didn’t work out that way. I only got to play one game. But you know, maybe that was supposed to happen.”
Ness has spent this year as an alternate captain manning the blueline with the Providence Bruins, the AHL affiliate of the NHL’s Boston Bruins.
That he plays in the AHL is why he’s able to play in the Olympics.
Originally, NHL players were on tap to head to Beijing next month for the men’s hockey tournament. However, as the NHL season lost a number of games due to COVID-19-related cancellations, the league and its players elected to pull back. No current NHL players are heading to China.
Starting Feb. 9, the Olympic hockey tournament will feature 12 countries. Russian players, by some considered a gold medal favorite, will skate under the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee.
Miele and Ness aren’t the state of Arizona’s only connection to this year’s men’s hockey tournament. While the pair are two of the United States’ oldest players at 33 and 31, respectively, forward Matthew Knies, 19, is one of its youngest. Knies, currently playing for the University of Minnesota, grew up in Phoenix as part of the Scottsdale-based Jr. Coyotes AAA program. Canada’s general manager happens to be Arizona Coyotes legend Shane Doan.
Roadrunners coach Jay Varady said he imagines the role Miele and Ness will carry on a U.S. roster that includes some teenagers.
“I’m sure they’re going to to be drawing on their leadership,” said Varady, whose Roadrunners face the Bakersfield Condors on the road Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. “It’s always about bringing the team together in a short time. How are you going to develop the camaraderie, the leadership, the culture in a short period of time and try to win a tournament?”
Added Ness of that type of role: “I’m at the stage now where I can hopefully help younger guys along the way and turn them in to players, and hopefully help them out in their careers from what I’ve learned.”
