Scenes From a Season, Part II

As mentioned yesterday, here come the other five teams...from Hull to Sheffield and everywhere in between....

HULL STINGRAYS
"you see, it's never bad enough
to just leave or give up
but, its never good enough to feel right"
Taking Back Sunday: "This Photograph is Proof (I Know You Know)"

Hull, once again, were a team harmed by a mix of horrifically negative coaching and bad luck when it came to personnel decisions. Rick Kozak, who was supposed to be Hull's big splash of a signing, came and went leaving nothing more than controversy behind him, enforcer Jonathan Bernier lasted a month and then bolted for a contract in the AHL, and Stuart Kerr spent most of the season in the stands with a recurrent injury. Stingrays fans became more and more open in showing their dislike of coach Rick Strachan and his negative, defence-first style of play on forums, and come Christmas it looked like an all-too-familiar story as Hull languished in the lower reaches of the league, saved from bottom only by a season in Basingstoke so bad, it could only have got worse due to a plague of locusts at the Silverdome.

However, post-Christmas, driven by the polished play of Steve Slonina, the scoring of Konstantin Kalmikov and Matt Reynolds, and the intensity of Jason Kostadine, the Stingrays slowly began to haul themselves back into playoff contention, and gave Edinburgh some sleepless nights before fizzling out towards the last two weekends of the season and finally hastening the departure of Strachan. With new coach Sylvain Cloutier promising to bring a very different type of hockey to Humberside, there is finally cause for optimism for the old hockey town on the edge of the North Sea next season...

Season Highlight: The play of Steve Slonina. Moved back to defence after originally being signed as a first-line centre, the native of Abington, Massachussetts turned heads with his ability to provide creativity from the blue, and was one of the brightest stars in Hull's season.

Player of the Season: Given that Slonina has already earned himselve the season highlight, this one goes to ex-Nottingham Panther Konstantin Kalmikov, who formed a partnership with Matt Reynolds that was always good for a goal or two...

Final Thought: With Rick Strachan finally nudged out of the picture, a new era begins on Humberside-if the Stingrays can keep Slonina, Reynolds and one or two others combined with Sylvain Cloutier's new approach, then maybe Hull hockey is finally coming out of its slump-there were a few promising signs this season-next season we'll see if-as Stingrays fans have claimed-the coaching, not the players, has been the problem over the past year or two.

MANCHESTER PHOENIX
"and if I had the chance
to do it all again
I wouldn't expect anything less"
New Found Glory: "Forget My Name"

What can you say about a team that gets to two cup finals, comes within touching distance of a trophy on two occasions despite playing with only one fit defenceman, and then loses both? A team that has the top scorer in the league by a continent, and wins eight of the twelve end-of-season awards,, including four to that same top scorer?
Well, you can salute them, or praise them to the skies. But, if you're a Manchester fan, or even if you're not, you'll also spend the summer wondering what might have been had the Phoenix not had to play eighteen games in the last month of the season, including two two-legged cup finals against Belfast...and had met Nottingham in the playoffs when not dead on their feet...

Season Highlight: Even though it all went wrong so soon afterward, the first 40 minutes of the Challenge Cup final first leg, where Manchester went 4-0 up against Belfast and the Altrincham Ice Dome rocked to its foundations must be the one...

Player of the Season: Easiest one on the board, if somewhat predictable. Had it not been for this guy, then the Phoenix would have had many, many candidates, not least among them wonder-goalie Stephen Murphy, the polished Kenton Smith or the scarily-good-when-he-wanted-to-be Luke Fulghum. But there really is one player who's far ahead of all of them, and the reason why can be summed up in four numbers. 69 games, 61 goals, 46 assists, 107 points. Step forward, David Beauregard.

Final Thought: Had they had a fixture-list that wasn't insanely congested in the last month of the season, how far could this team have gone?

NEWCASTLE VIPERS
"Well it's 4 AM and it seems to me
Tonight's not going down in history"
I Hate Kate: "Always Something"

I predicted before the start of the season that Newcastle could possibly be an outside bet for the league title if all fell well for them...

Well, how stupid did I feel come October?

The Vipers had a season that was instantly forgettable-even despite the efforts of Derek Campbell, Andre Payette and company to make Vipers games memorable...much like the Stingrays, their much-trumpeted import star (Tyler Willis) simply didn't turn up, their coach (Rob Wilson) was openly hated by a significant proportion of Vipers fans towards the end of the season, and the highlight of their season was being the width of JF Perras' backside and thirty seconds from reaching the playoff weekend. When you further add on that the face of the franchise in the North-East is either this or this, and both are reaching the twilight of their careers and having opposition fans openly laugh at them for various reasons (Longstaff slightly less so than Payette-it's more cosmetic reasons with the Vipers captain, although judging by his player page Payette at least is a superb "embassedtor" for the Vipers, whatever that is) then you can imagine that the 08/09 Vipers season DVD will probably not fly off the shelves...this team looks tired, Vipers hockey looks tired, and both need a revamp desperately...

Season Highlight: Seriously? Erm...OK...probably the play of the young North-East contingent: Ben Campbell and Dean Holland up front, Jamie Tinsley and Jez Lundin on defence and Richard Lawson in goal, all of whom have bright futures in British hockey and prove that the Whitley Bay production line is still bearing fruit...

Player of the Season: For giving hope to retired hockey snipers everywhere that they can still become a fan-favourite without doing much more than putting a few pucks in the net, the award goes to Ed Courtenay...

Final Thought: The Vipers need new blood-desperately. Another season like this and top-flight hockey in the North East may become simply unviable as people drift away...

NOTTINGHAM PANTHERS
"You see it should've been me
could've been me
Everybody knows
Everybody says so"
Reel Big Fish: "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful"

Once again, Nottingham had all the pieces in place to win themselves a trophy or two. Once again, they end the season trophyless. Despite having arguably the best creative tandem in the league in Dan Tessier and Johan Molin, the agitating skills and drive of Bruce Richardson, one of the best group of snipers in Jade Galbraith, Brendan Cook and David Clarke, and a defenceman of real class on the ice in Corey Neilson, Neil Black's approach of "throw money at the problems of last season until we solve them" once again failed to bear fruit, losing out to that old chestnut of combining many individuals to function as one matchwinning team (Sheffield) being far more effective than trying to build a team from a group of matchwinning individuals...as we saw most notably when the two met in the playoff finals....

Season Highlight: Fittingly for a team who revelled in scoring individual points, it has to be the two occasions when they did so in spectacular fashion, responding to the ill-advised "Team Hollywood" taunts from Blaze coach Paul Thompson by taking Coventry well and truly apart at the Skydome on December 22nd in response, following it up by doing the same when the two met in the playoff semi. However, the lustre is lost when you realise that, for all the sound, fury and mockery, both Coventry and Nottingham ended the season with the same number of trophies...zero.

Player of the Season: Much as I'd have liked to pick my personal favourite Panther Molin, it has to go to Bruce Richardson-his worth to the Panthers can perhaps be measured most accurately by the fact that he's already been signed up for next season to universal joy from the NIC faithful...

Final Thought: Point-scoring is temporary. But come September, all people will remember is another trophyless season for Nottingham...

SHEFFIELD STEELERS
"I'll be coming home next year
Everything's alright up here
When I come down
I'll be coming home next year"
Foo Fighters: "Next Year"

The Steelers can go into the summer well satisfied after a season which no-one, not even the most rabid Yorkshire pessimist, could complain about. From day one, Dave Matsos' team simply played their game, ignored any attempts to destabilize the dressing-room harmony that you only get from a team who'd been together for several seasons, and did what they came to be known as doing best-winning hockey game after hockey game. After the rocky patch of the early-season ructions between themselves and Cardiff lost them many friends outside South Yorkshire, they could have come out with a chip on their shoulder and lost composure-but they didn't, turning the Hallam Arena into a fortress and strode shoulder-to-shoulder towards a league title which looked almost inevitable from late-January. Built on the foundation of a goalie and defence which made this little construction look easier to get through, along with a bunch of forwards who spread the scoring evenly throughout themselves, Sheffield were arguably the most complete EIHL team since the all-conquering Coventry team of 04/05...and thus sit deservedly on top of the British hockey pile once again...

Season Highlight: Well they're league and playoff champions...so that should do nicely. However, beating Nottingham in their own rink to win the playoffs (and doing so in possibly the most one-sided 2-0 win in history) probably puts the playoff win slightly higher in terms of an individual highlight for many Steelers fans...

Player of the Season: It could be the goaltending heroics of Jody Lehman, it could be the offensive skills from the blue-line of Rod Sarich, the sniping of Joey Talbot or the defensive efforts of Steve Munn that win this, but one player on the Steelers roster has come to embody their mix of hard-nosed play, intensity and skill, as well as becoming the heart and soul of the Steelers franchise. Born in Lethbridge, Alberta but an adopted son of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, it's the player everyone in the league wishes was on their roster however much they may hate him...number ten, Ryan Finnerty.

Final Thought: Proof that sometimes, good things come to those who wait...the 2008/09 Sheffield Steelers.

There you go, then...that's your 2008/09 EIHL season done and dusted. It's all over, folks...

Tomorrow, we'll turn our attention to the international game, as we look at GB's exploits in Torun-before the Breakaway goes onto its summer schedule of one, maybe two postings a week about the Stanley Cup playoffs and all things rumour related... but I shall conclude the review with this thought...

As hockey fans everywhere drift through the long, lazy dog-days of spring and summer, with only feverish speculation on Internet forums on signings old and new and late-nights spent watching the Stanley Cup to sustain them, then, for many, the thirty seconds at the beginning of this clip sums up the summer thoughts for British hockey fans to perfection...

Enjoy your off-season, people...and keep keeping your eye on the puck...