A major hockey fan since he was about 8 years old, Nicholas Armas was playing in an adult ice hockey league in Kendall when he got the chance to play on the ice at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise, the home of the Florida Panthers.
His team, the Rebels, didn't win that day in 2019, but it's an experience he said he'll never forget.
"I scored a goal on the Panthers' ice," he said. "That will stay with me forever."
Armas, who has worked at the University's Distance Learning Institute since January 2020, now has another experience he says he will never forget.
As the manager of instructional design at DLI, he collaborated with the Panthers organization for nearly a year to create an educational course on the game called Hockey 101. He didn't do it alone of course. He worked with the team of designers and multimedia specialists at DLI, which is part of the University's Division of Continuing and International Education (DCIE).
Hockey 101, a free, online non-credit course, was launched as part of a new partnership between the Panthers and the University of Miami UOnline.
"I kept thinking, 'How the heck did I wind up with this assignment,' " said Armas, who has followed the U.S. Olympics Men's Ice Hockey team since he was a kid and has attended several games of the University's Club Ice Hockey team, which plays at the Kendall Ice Arena, the same place he got his start in recreational ice hockey.
He said he would have played hockey in college if it had been available to him but played baseball instead.
"For someone like me, who has pretty much grown up with hockey, it was pretty cool to be working with a major sports organization like the Panthers."
Alexa Rimart, a multimedia instructional specialist, said she knew nothing about hockey previously but enjoyed learning about the game through her work designing new video content for the course.
"Working on Hockey 101 was an incredibly rewarding experience," she said. "I had the chance to create videos from scratch, honing my creativity in a fresh and exciting new direction. This really has been an amazing project for everyone."
Armas said the Panthers were supportive of the University and its work on the project and provided images and National Hockey League video clips to help produce the course.
However, with the Stanley Cup in their sights at the time, most of the Panthers' organization was keenly focused on the demands of the season. So, the University was given "free reign" to design and build the course from scratch.
It is narrated by veteran Panthers broadcaster Doug Plagans, who is entering his seventh season as the official radio narrator for the team. Armas said he met several times with Plagans via Zoom.
"I wrote the script, and he sent back the entire thing, narrated in one take," Armas said. "It's incredible how professional and perfect for this job he is. Even when he's not working, his voice sounds exactly like it does on the radio."
Claudia Velasquez, who joined the team just a few months before the Panthers project began, designed the user interface that appears on the University's website.
"She made the entire vision come to life," Armas explained.
Velasquez said the project was challenging but also rewarding. Their team had to find a way to work the Panthers project in between other, sometimes more urgent tasks for University professors teaching for-credit courses.
"It was a cool experience to develop custom content with the Panthers," Velasquez said. "I had the opportunity to stretch my knowledge of instructional design and my creativity as a designer to reach the goals of the project."
Armas said the overall goal of the course is to provide someone who is largely unfamiliar with the game all the knowledge they would need to understand what is happening on the ice - whether in person or on television.
"It's not everything that will ever happen in a game, but it is at least everything that happens in every game," he said.
So, what's next for this band of new "hockey experts"?
Eventually, they will work with the Panthers on Hockey 201 and Hockey 301 for more advanced instruction on the game and the team.
His hope, Armas said, is that their work will educate people in South Florida who may not be familiar with the game and how it is played.
That, in turn, will potentially generate a new base of hockey fans.
"If you know what's going on, you can really watch the game and become much more interested in it," he said. "It plants the seed. Most people don't realize it but hockey is happening here."
"It's gained a footing and we have more and more phenomenal athletes, coaches, and players who are just as good as any in the northern states."
Hockey 101 is free and open to everyone. Individuals who complete the course will receive a certificate of completion signed by team Captain Aleksander Barkov.
