By Amy Johnson, Ice Caps Hockey Report

SYRACUSE, NY — Fifty-two AHL stars gathered once again at center ice in Syracuse on Monday night. Each were selected based on their outstanding play thus far in the 2015-16 season. The best of the American League.  Many contend these players are a force to be reckoned with, and the jumbers tend to agree.

• 82 AHL players league-wide have made their NHL debut this season (including Michael McCarron of the St. John’s IceCaps).
• 23 of this year’s AHL All-Stars have played in the NHL this season.
• This years All-Stars have tallied 1,968 career NHL games.
• Of the 679 players (since 1995) who have played in the AHL All-Star Classic, 94.7% of them have gone on to play in the NHL.

It’s safe to say the AHL continues to produce a lot of promising talent for the NHL. And for the St. John’s IceCaps McCarron and Morgan Ellis certainly represented them well. We spoke with each of them before the game, watch the video below.

The game was broken down into three periods, each containing two nine-minute round robin games pitting divisions against each other. Each game was played 4-on-4 for the first half and 3-on-3 for the second half.

It took a couple of games for guys to get a feel for the format, but then they started to get serious. Ellis assisted on the North’s first goal by Josh Leivo and had plenty of scoring chances of his own. Ellis was quite noticeable every time he took the ice and skated very well. McCarron assisted on a different Leivo goal, then potted one of his own off a sweet centering pass from Matt Taormina.

In the end, Central beat out Atlantic for the championship win. McCarron and Ellis now head back to St. John’s for a short break before gearing up to face Utica on Friday. Be sure to check out their post-game interviews below.

Post-game interview with Morgan Ellis

Post-game interview with Michael McCarron