(Tuesday) Fighting and Frolics...

And so we return for our daily wander through the hallowed portals of British hockey-particularly the Elite league variety. And we begin with a poor excuse to use a classic song title as a headline before moving on to fighting...

Ruby Tuesday: Sergiy Rublivskiy (being a pedant, this is the Russian way of spelling it) returns to Hull after being released by Newcastle in a move that wasn't exactly unanticipated-as successful comebacks go, this looks like being more Eldorado than Take That. Mainly because the Ukrainian is a great goalscorer when given someone to feed him, but not while playing on the third line as he was in Newcastle-And looking at the Hull roster, just who is going to provide the assists on a team whose top provider is...43rd in the league ranking. And don't claim it's due to Hull's lack of goals, because Edinburgh's Ryan Crane (a d-man, by the way) is twenty-one places higher. Still...on the off-chance he touches the puck in a scoring position more than once or twice a game, the goals could trickle in a little faster for the Stingrays...

Hide the white stilettos...:...for fear they'll be thrown in anger, as rumours are coming out of Essex that the Romford Raiders will have to move due to the closure of Rom Valley Way rink. There's not much more than conjecture at the moment flying around about this, but it will certainly worry friends of the EPL side...

Only one way to settle this....fight!: Where have all the enforcers gone? Time was you couldn't go to any rink in the country without a good chance of seeing a player signed more for his ability to throw (and take) a decent punch than a decent check (players like Cornish, Rob McCaig, Louis Bedard, and Dennis Vial come to mind) Nowadays the breed is more represented by Brits, and then at EPL level, mainly by the likes of Andrew Sharp, Norm Pinnington, Mark Williams etc. But, with the cutting of Jeremy Cornish by Sheffield last week, the trend towards "team toughness" espoused particularly by Newcastle and to a lesser extent Coventry, and simply the fact that you can now go weeks without seeing a decent scrap, one wonders just where the traditional import "enforcer" has gone in British hockey. A telling example of the change in emphasis was seen recently when Blaze did sign Andrew Sharp recently as a two-wayer, they used the fact that he was a "tough Brit" as a major selling point.
I think we're seeing some sort of evolution here, and the signing of a player like Sharp is the first sign of it. The enforcer is not dead, as some seem to be claiming-he's simply more likely to be a Brit as teams have realised that someone who can fight and not much else is not much use when he's a Canadian, especially with the import quotas.
But, someone who can fight and not much else isn't much use in today's British game, as unlike the NHL, the small rosters and relatively small budgets mean every player has to be able to play several different roles in order to make a successful career. Hence the influx of players like Brad Voth, Sylvain Cloutier and Brad Cruikshank into the British game-players who prefer to rack up the points rather than the penalty minutes, while being capable of both. And this is a wonderful thing-because the more multi-dimensional the players, the more multi-dimensional and thus the better to watch the game is.

And that is your somewhat short Tuesday trip....apologies as I have a feeling this isn't my best posting ever quality-wise...but check back tomorrow for my thoughts on the Best of British Cup and more...

Keep keeping your eye on the puck...