Reign pack their bags, Voce calls it a career.

When the Reign packed up their equipment and left The Bank one last time on Monday, the moment meant a little more to Tony Voce, who announced that Saturday’s game in Las Vegas was the last of his professional career.

The 29-year-old forward is moving back to Philadelphia to be with his wife and family. He said he wasn’t the same after the knee injury that cost him a month of the season in November and December.

“I was hurt most of the year,” he said. “Once it was done, it’s done.”

“I didn’t play very well,” he continued. “I could have done a lot more. I think I was just an average player. My points and stuff were productive, but overall I
expected a lot more out of myself. Yeah, my goals were nice, but I’m a goal-scorer, that’s what I was brought here to do. I had some pretty nice goals, 23. But it’s time to be done.”

Voce owns two businesses, one of which he had to put on hold to play hockey.

“I’m excited to get home,” he said.

Like many of his teammates, Voce cited a tough schedule that coincided with a stretch of 11 losses in 12 games between December and January as a big reason for the team’s early off-season. Check out the rest of his thoughts on the season, as well as those of his teammates and coach Karl Taylor, in tomorrow’s editions of the Sun and Daily Bulletin.

I’ll try to update the blog with more content as the week progresses. Here are a few more newsworthy tidbits:

– Jon Rheault is headed back to the American Hockey League. He was recalled by the Abbotsford Heat today.
– Taylor said that Geoff Walker, Colten Teubert, Jordan Nolan and Michael Pelech were headed to Los Angeles to meet with the Kings, but he wasn’t sure exactly what they were meeting about. Teubert, Nolan and Pelech are all Kings draft picks, while Walker is under contract to the Kings’ AHL affiliate, the Manchester Monarchs.
– Sean O’Connor has signed with Augsburg of the Deutsch Elite League, the team he began the season with.
– Andrew Martens had the best excuse for not making up his mind about his plans for next season: His wife is expecting the couple’s second child Friday.