The South Carolina Stingrays announced the addition of a veteran enforcer to their roster Friday.
Trevor Gillies brings 57 games of NHL experience to the Stingrays and is no stranger to ECHL ice. He broke into the ECHL during the 1999-2000 season with the Mississippi Sea Wolves, racking up 202 PIM in 53 games. Later that season, Gillies received a call-up to the American Hockey League with the Lowell Lock Monsters, where he tallied 38 PIM in 8 games.
Gillies would spend the next five season bouncing between the ECHL and AHL, before finally earning his ticket to the NHL with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim during the 2005-06 season. He would not appear on another NHL roster until the 2009-10 season, when he was with the New York Islanders, where he spent portions of three seasons, playing in an additional 56 NHL games, racking up 261 penalty minutes.
But Gillies’ assets to a team go deeper than his ability to put on the foil. In a recent interview with Adirondack Thunder broadcaster Cameron Close, he described the kind of leader Gillies is off-the-ice.
“Such good role models in the locker room for the younger guys. They (Gillies and Devin Setoguchi) have been there before and knows what it takes to get up there,” Close said. “If you weren’t in the gym and you were a first or second year player and you should be in the gym, Trevor Gillies was going to drag you into that gym.”
“Trevor brings leadership, a professionalism and a work ethic that are second to none,” Stingrays Head Coach Spencer Carbery told the Charleston Post and Courier. “He’s regarded in the hockey world as an incredible teammate who takes his job very seriously. He has the ability to bring an entire team together and get them all pulling in the same direction.”
You can hear an excerpt from the interview with Cameron Close regarding Gillies, here:
http://audio.thesinbin.net/interviews/2015/Cameron_Close_on_AHL_Gillies_09-19-15.mp3
With the addition of Gillies, the Stingrays now have 11 players signed for training camp.