Breaking The ice

Skater Spotlight with Aaron Berisha 

Being back at Budweiser Gardens in London was extremely special for Aaron Berisha who played there at the end of his OHL Career as a member of the London Knights. Getting the championship win with Team Carbonneau in front of some friends and family, and in a place filled with so many memories made the weekend even better for Berisha. 

“Playing there, it was the first time since we won my last year with the Knights, so it was really cool to be back,” Berisha said. “Obviously winning anything is special, but to win in a tournament where each individual weekend you play for some pretty big prize money was really special.”

Despite struggling a bit in the first half of the season, Berisha and the rest of Team Carbonneau have had a fun time since the puck dropped in Las Vegas. #16 of Team Carbonneau gives credit to his head coach, Guy Carbonneau, for choosing a great team that has gotten along from the very beginning. Their connection showed this weekend when they came into a critical first game against Team Mullen and left with the win. 

“Personally, we might not have the best team on paper, but I just think that we’ve learned to play really well together, and we’ve had really good chemistry on the ice,” Berisha said. “It was kind of like if we got one game, we got one game, and we kind of just kept going and going with it. We weren't thinking too much about the finals, we were just kind of taking it shift by shift.” 

When looking at the point system, having a win is really going to help Team Carbonneau and Berisha feels that it’ll set his team up for the final weekend. It’s understood that every weekend is important and with the last one in Vegas being the biggest, the Red Team looks to use this win to give them the best opportunity they can have to make it to Vegas. 

“We’re trying to take care of each individual weekend and trying to compete as hard as we can so that we have the best kind of outcome possible that you could have in that last week,” Berisha said. “I think to have the win this weekend is giving us the confidence that even though we're the team that was in last place before, it can just change every weekend.” 

For Berisha and his fellow Canadians of the 3ICE league, being able to play this weekend was a cool feeling to finally take the ice with their teams. 

“Personally, it was good to for me to take advantage of the opportunity in London and again in Quebec City in a few weeks,” Berisha said. “Hopefully it’s another weekend like this, which was amazing, so I’m definitely looking forward to the next few weekends here with 3ICE.”