Midweek Musings...

Is it Wednesday already? It must be time for some midweek musings, then...

Well, that's one finalist all but decided: Coventry won 5-1 in Edinburgh last night in the first leg of their KO Cup Semi, which makes tonight's second leg at the Skydome something of a foregone conclusion...to the point where one of my season-ticket holding friends has sent me a text today asking if I'd like to go and see Cloverfield with them, as it's likely to be far more interesting that watching two bored teams play out a meaningless game. When someone who doesn't miss a game and even made the trip to Sheffield for the quarters would rather go and see a bad monster movie than a semi-final, even when the price is slightly reduced, you know a competition has problems...
The British KO Cup. Feel the passion!

Auditors? Why not?: After yesterday's post, a comment mentioned that perhaps an independent audit of clubs finances would be a better way of doing things. Maybe it would. But that wouldn't allow for the public release of the figures so that everyone could see just where the money was going and just who is spending what-which is the whole point of things in the first place. It's easy to do...you just put them in a news item in the Elite website, in a simple list. "Wage bills. Basingstoke, £x,000. Belfast, £y,000, Cardiff, £z,000....." But of course I'm going to be told that this is unrealistic. Why? Because the people who will decide on this are the same people who have a vested interest on people not knowing if they're cheating the league by breaking the cap...the owners. The EIHL is a boys club, with three or four powerful owners dominating by force of personality/money/influence on friends.
Open-ness. Apart from wages, clubs need to tell people why they make decisions. If ticket prices go up, there should be a concrete reason, rather than just "operations" which is a nice vague term that anyone can use. PR-speak is not enough any more for the vast majority of fans, because they'll simply turn round and say "cover-up".
Discipline for the league should be an open process, not something where the EIHL board make up the rules as they go along.
And can we please stop certain clubs trying to shove stuff they're selling right down your throat?

Ouch (warning-these links are pretty graphic-not for the weak of stomach): The NHL, and indeed the whole hockey world, was rocked this Monday as Richard Zednik gets his throat slit by a skate. Thankfully, he's OK and is recovering in hospital, but stuff like this reminds you that those things on hockey players feet are bloody dangerous if they come up in the wrong way...ask Clint Malarchuk. Maybe that also explains something to you about why part of the hockey code is "never, ever target a goalie" and also why, if you've played and accidentally caught the oppostion goalie and then had half the opposition team pile onto you, just why they did so.
I'm not going to give a sermon about this because I don't wear a neck-guard when I play. But you get close to it when you see stuff like this...

And on that downbeat note-keep keeping your eye on the puck...