Minson, Casey

BORN OCTOBER 13TH 1985 in Fremantle, WA, Australia, his father David was a former ice hockey player, Brown Trophy winner, state referee-in-chief, rink developer, director of Perth Ice Arena, and Life Member of the national association. He grew up around the game, a homegrown youngster developing through the local leagues with brothers, Liam and Blair, to play for the Perth Avalanche.

In 2004, he represented Australia in the National Junior Team (U20) winning gold and promotion at the Division III Worlds in Sofia, Bulgaria. In 2005, he scored his first international goal at the Junior Worlds in Puigcerda Spain.

He represented WA in the Brown Trophy (U23) in 2004 and '08, and in 2005, he joined the Newcastle North Stars in the AIHL as a defenseman, alongside such players as Rob Starke. He remained at the club until the end of the 2010 season for a total of 148 games, averaging 0.8 points per game from defense at his peak, and winning Goodall Cups in 2005, '06 and '08.

He competed with the seniors in the 2008 IIHF World Championship Division II tournament at home in Newcastle. Australia won gold and the first ever promotion to Division I, a fairytale ending in the nation's centenary year of organised ice hockey. He rejoined the team for the 2009 IIHF Division I Worlds in Vilneus Lithuania where a winless Australia was relegated. At Dunedin in New Zealand that year, he again represented Australia at the NZ Winter Games.

In 2009, he played eight games for Alberta's Fort Saskatchewan Chiefs of the Chinook Hockey League; the Ankara sport club in Turkey; and 16 games for SC Forst of the Bavarian Landesliga in the 2009-10 off-season. In the 2010s, he was a director and manager of Xtreme Ice Arena at Mirabooka in his hometown, and he played local hockey for the Northern Vikings in the WAS.

In the off-season he played with ESC Darmstadt after a handful of games with Krefelder Niederrhein of the German Oberliga. Back home, he split the season between the Northern Vikings and the Gold Coast Blue Tongues in the AIHL (2012), capping-off a total of 21 goals 45 assists over a 159-game AIHL career. He traveled with his father from Perth to the east coast every weekend, said former Blue Tongues coach, Peter Nixon, praising their love for the game.