International Tuesday Thoughts

The EIHL season review is taking far longer than I thought it would, thanks to me having lots of other stuff on, so today we will confine ourselves to international matters in a fairly short post...

Let's just say that it's fairly hard to find positives after being beaten by 10 goals to five by Austria last night, even though the home nation is arguably the best team in the group. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet I watched some streaming coverage of the game, and the gulf in class was very noticeable indeed. It's not even as if you can blame the gap purely on experience, either, as comparably the Austrian roster is of a similar average age to the current GB one. Nor can you claim that Thomas Vanek was the difference for the Austrians, as he didn't score all ten goals nor did he assist on all of them. There were three major areas which seemed to win the game:

Skating/Fitness: We'll take these together, since one has an impact on the other. The Austrians were quicker, kept going at a high pace for longer, and looked far surer on their skates than the GB squad...whether this is due to the fact that the vast majority play at a higher level or just pure conditioning, it still needs to be rectified if the Brits are to keep up at this level...

Passing: Another area which saw the Austrians streets ahead. Hairiest moment of the night was Jonny Weaver deciding to pass the puck out in front of his own net without looking after (presumably) hearing a shout for it-straight onto the stick of a lurking Thomas Vanek. Thankfully the Sabre fanned on his shot (presumably out of surprise) but the number of giveaways, if you compared them, would probably be something like two to one in the direction of GB.

Defence: Austria fire in 56 shots, GB muster 18. It doesn't take a genius to work out that there's far more likelihood of conceding a goal the more shots you allow...especially when you then give the forwards a second or even third bite at the cherry by not clearing the puck...

All teams now have a rest day before GB take on Korea on Wednesday-this game is coming at probably the best time for the Brits as they can go for their first morale-boosting victory against arguably the weakest team in the group...

That's your Tuesday thoughts for today...keep keeping your eye on the puck...