Meet The

Team

Tournament Staff

Mark Cardillo

League Director

Matthew Kiernan is Vice President of Hockey for the Atlantic Hockey Federation. Matt oversees all aspects of the AHF. Matt is the co-founder and co-owner of the New Jersey 87’s, a member of the Eastern Hockey League (EHL) where he serves as an Executive Committee member and is also on the league’s Board of Directors. He has held various coaching titles including Associate Head Coach of the EHL and EHLP teams and Head Coach at the U18 AAA level. Matt is a graduate of the University of Scranton. Prior to shifting his career to youth and junior hockey, Matt was an equity derivatives trader for 20+ years.

Cindy Irving

Director of Operations

Cindy has strong analytical and administrative skills. She worked 20 years for Alamo Rent a Car in Fort Lauderdale as Senior Assistant Director in charge of utilization and yield management for over 60 airport car rental locations before transferring to the Philadelphia location as City Controller and Assistant Facility Manager. She over all has spent 22 years. She has operated several businesses to include a Day Care Center, and currently runs an in home bakery business.

In 2003 she took a position with the Pond Ice Arena (which is now the Patriot Ice Arena) and has been with the arena for 19 years. She began as a Special Events Coordinator and then took on the role as General Manager/Tournament Director from 2005-2017.

She currently handles the administrative side to the Patriot Ice Arena and is the Director of Tournament Operations for Defender Hockey, handling the tournament registrations and scheduling for all Defender tournaments throughout the Defender territory. She has been putting tournaments together since 2000 where she was a volunteer with the Delaware Ducks and booking in their Flight on Ice Tournament, and from there tournaments have grown at The Patriot Ice Arena to 11 tournaments a year.