With Teeth...or an Open Letter to Dan Tessier

(Warning: this post may contain a naughty word or two. Nothing too bad but probably best you don't read it out in church):

I know it's been a little while since I've posted on here (two weeks, in fact) and in that time Belfast have completed their roster, or near as dammit, Sheffield have completed theirs, and Coventry have lost their inspirational captain Sylvain Cloutier. We'll get to the third of these three in a minute, but first fairness compels me to consider the fact that a club in the UK are now charging £17 to watch their games-and it isn't Coventry!

Thank you, Manchester...I spend most of November praising your efforts and then you go and raise ticket prices to seventeen pounds for walkups. Has anyone told them we're currently in a credit crunch? Come to that, has anyone told any of the Elite teams? Or the EPL?

In Manchester's favour, it will still (relatively) cost about the same for families thanks to a chop in the kids prices-but even so...how many away fans can say now they'll definitely make all three league trips to Manchester (another way of saving money for the walk-ups).
The real tragedy of this is that there are some very good rosters being built this season (including in Manchester)-but with economics being the way they are, there may well be fewer people to watch them...

Newcastle get a big Mac: And for once, there's not a topless football fan in sight. Chris McAllister is back in the UK-all 6'7 of him. Maybe Hull won't have it all their own way. This monster can play too...

Plug of the Week: Given that I always keep an eye out for newbies in the hockey blogosphere (apart from the Snowplough-which was good when it got Carlyle Lewis coming to the Blaze right (after me, by the way) but not great since then, I recommend that this week, as well as all on the blogroll at left, you add Four Point Four Seconds to your trawl through the blog world. Yes, it's by a Panthers fan, and thus may contain some anti-Sheffield/Coventry/refereeness but it's ruddy good thus far, and another quality addition to the expanding world of UK hockey blogs...

Let's see-we now have Edinburgh, Coventry, Belfast, Manchester, Hull, and Nottingham covered, plus the EPL...four more teams and the (EIHL and EPL) scene is well and truly covered. Plus the Ice Hockey Annual blog (link to follow)

Where's Sylvain Cloutier-gone to the U.S.A: Apologies to Panthers fans for nicking their song, but come on...you grinned...and predictably, there is an outbreak of holier-than-thou-ness on the hockey forums when Dan Tessier is mentioned as his replacement, with many (Blaze fans in particular) saying that they wouldn't inmediately sign Dan Tessier-who was rumoured to be coming in as injury cover in January, let's not forget. It seems to be one of the few things you can get Nottingham and Coventry fans to agree on. And I have three (one slightly naughty) words to anybody who is seriously letting this "oh, he's a bit of a loner (to put it politely)" image cloud their view of him or any other similar player. And also to the whole "you need to be a nice guy to be an important part of a team-everyone has to have chemistry with everyone else".

Bollocks to it.

Dan Tessier scores goals. And sets them up. Very frequently indeed. Now, I accept that. if the reports are true, he is not the easiest guy to get on with. I also accept every team (supposedly) needs everyone to get on to do well (although I'm suspicious of that "truth" since we as hockey fans likely wouldn't give two flying pucks if there were bare-knuckle fights in the dressing room if our team was winning on the ice-have you never seen Slapshot and such like? There's so much stuff in the press about it that "he's a good team guy" is now a phrase used to excuse all manner of inability or shortcoming on the rink-people make decent, well-paid careers out of being "good team guys" with relatively little hockey ability, even in the NHL, for God's sake).

Games aren't won by "which team gets on the best" though. They're won by "who scores the most goals". And with Dan Tessier or someone like him in your side you will more often than not score more than the opposition. Which means trophies, wins, and everyone conveniently forgetting that someone isn't Mother Teresa. Quite frankly, were I a coach who had 20 players who never spoke to each other apart from training and games (when they played like they'd shared the ice with the other 19 all their lives) because they despise each other and was called on it, my first reply would be "hey-they win."

For this to come from Blaze and Panthers fans in particular is particularly rich-Panthers were the ones who brought Tess to the UK in the first place (and loved him until he left) and Blaze fans forgave the excesses of Andre Payette=who had at least one bare-knuckle training fight-oh, and offered out a team-mate (Doug Schueller) during a game. But Blaze won the treble, he was a major reason Dan Carlson and Adam Calder had the space to play (without a similar player they'd be checked into next week by legal and illegal means) and so these same people talking about Tessier's character flaws can, in the same breath, defend similar from a player who won them games.

So, Tess, as long as you keep being one of the best centres ever to play in the EIHL, bollocks to the doom-mongers or the people who will turn down someone unless they hug kittens, get on with everyone and are GOOD TEAM GUYS. I will join every other fan in the league with an import slot still open in whispering, even if they will never admit it...

"come and play for the team I support. Please?"