Team Cuba president Arnold Cuervo, mindful of Montoya\u2019s popularity within South Florida\u2019s Cuban community during the goalie\u2019s playing days, reached out to him via Instagram and invited him to coach the U12 team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first Cuban in the NHL and all the barriers that he broke, it\u2019s absolutely amazing to have him be a part of this,\u201d Cuervo said. \u201cTo have The Big Cubano on our side is a huge advantage, just because of who he is, and it validates what we\u2019re doing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Cuban American skaters are among more than 1,500 players competing this year in the LATAM Cup, which began Saturday at the IceDen in Coral Springs and Palm Beach Skate Zone in Wellington, Florida, and runs through Aug. 9.<\/p>\n
They are representing 16 countries and territories, including Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Greece, Israel, Lebanon, Mexico, Pakistan, Venezuela and Indigenous\/First Nation tribes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The NHL and the NHL Players\u2019 Association, through the NHL Industry Growth Fund and the Panthers, help support the tournament. The fund was created as part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement in 2013 to support and accelerate the development of League and club initiatives as well as projects that promote long-term fan development and increase participation in hockey at all levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people who assembled Team Cuba, the LATAM Cup, and the NHL and NHLPA being behind it and supporting,\u201d Montoya said, \u201cthis is what it\u2019s all about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team Cuba president Arnold Cuervo, mindful of Montoya\u2019s popularity within South Florida\u2019s Cuban community during the goalie\u2019s playing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-798713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}