Local Girl To Help Heat Up The Ice Next NHL Season

By Patrick Conti
Little Neck Patch
8/19/2011

It’s official sports fans, the New York Islanders have just announced their starting lineup for the 2011-2012 ‘Ice-Girls’ squad.

And for the fifth year in a row the Islanders welcome back a young woman from Little Neck, affectionately known as ‘Ice-Girl Samantha.’

“I’m so excited to have made the Ice-Girls team for another year. I really can’t wait to meet all the new girls,” said the five year Ice-Girl veteran.

The Ice-Girls are a team of 10 young women, who entertain the audience during commercial breaks and in between periods, cleaning the ice, shooting tee-shirts into the crowd and roaming the arena, leading screaming fans in rounds of cheering.

A concept introduced to the NHL by the Islanders during the 2001-2002 season—after the league issued a mandate requiring all buildings to provide staff that could ice skate to shovel the ice clean—the idea of having ice girls is still relatively new to professional hockey, but is catching on quick.

“We were the first though,” said Tim Beach, vice president of Events & Operations, who manages the Ice Girl squad.

Still, Beach was quick to point out that while the on-ice antics of these young ladies is vastly becoming a crowd favorite at Nassau Coliseum, the Ice Girls were more than just cheerleaders.

“These girls are representatives of the Islanders in the community,” Beach said, pointing to a busy calendar of events and appearances the girls make throughout the season.

For Samantha, these appearances are partly what she loves most about the job.

“I like being a role model for young girls. It’s important they have someone to look up to,” she said.

So for all those in Little Neck who haven’t been to a N.Y. Islanders game recently, there seems to be an entirely different reason to come out and cheer for the Islanders—and her name is ‘Ice Girl Samantha.’