Midweek Musings...

The trouble with writing a daily blog in the (almost) off-season is that you have to try and avoid repeating yourself-hockey news has almost gone into a kind of limbo despite the Stanley Cup playoffs starting tonight-I did consider doing a preview of them but it's one of those things you can find all but everywhere else with a few seconds' searching (and done far better than I could), so I scotched that idea. However, there are some interesting tidbits floating around the British hockey world....

Scottish rinks in trouble...: According to this BBC News article, the state of hockey in Scotland (currently with only one top-flight team in Edinburgh and a league which is well and truly disconnected from the rest of the UK as far as coverage in prestige goes) could get even worse thanks to the threatened closure of even more rinks. The article states that the vast majority of rinks in Scotland are making a loss, and this situation could only get worse thanks to the need to replace the refrigeration plants in order to comply with EU regulations coming in in the near future. The good news is that Murrayfield has apparently already done so...however, with almost nothing now heard of Fife and Dundee (once great hockey towns) outside of a few diehards who keep an eye on the Scottish league, reports of a collapse in the Scottish league and no chance of the "big" sides returning to the EIHL any time soon, these aren't great times for hockey-fans north of the border...

Devils chasing Mark Smith: According to the South Wales Echo, Cardiff are targeting a return of their top centre (and one of the best of the EIHL era, in my opinion) Mark Smith for next season. The Canadian, who's spent this season in Italy after scoring 35+57 for the Devils in 06/07, is believed to be interested in a return to the Welsh capital-the Devils faithful will be hoping this will rekindle his partnership with Max Birbraer in order to provide a top line which can compete with any in the league, including the famed AC/DC partnership in Coventry...

More Blaze rumours: Although this time Curtis Huppe is the player being replaced, as the ex-Giant is rumoured to be retiring this off-season. Lance Galbraith is a name that's been mentioned as a target-as a fairly prolific scorer in the ECHL he would more than slot in on the top two lines of any EIHL side...

More Wagecap questions: An idea from the Phoenix forum to sort out the clear problems with the current wagecap...make all contracts the responsibility of the EIHL rather than the teams themselves, with the teams paying the wage money into a central account which is then distributed to the players according to the terms of their contract. Not a bad idea at all, this-it would make the cap a hell of a lot harder to break if the people running the league knew what everyone else was being paid-and since all contracts are central, it would allow for trades between teams without breaking the EU employment laws, since players would still be working for the same employer, but just "transferred" to a different department under the same contract...But I'm sure there'll be some reason why this couldn't be applied to UK hockey, so once again we return to the problem of the people running the league also being the people who effectively ignore their own rules in the first place...

There you go-there's the Midweek Musings for this week...tomorrow we will take an in-depth look at the first two teams in the EPL playoff weekend and begin the build-up to Coventry as well as round-up any new rumours...

Keep keeping your eye on the puck...