Short and Sweet Round the Rinks

Due to having a laptop that might fail at any minute, we're going simply to have a quick look at the weekend this time round...I know it's a bit depressingly short, but reference will be made to midweek, honest...

DOUBLE-HEADERS

Sheffield v Belfast: This could be another torrid weekend for the struggling Steelers-they're up against a Belfast side who won 4-0 in midweek, have the hottest scoring streak in the league right now in Jeff Szwez, and, by the way, have barely reached the potential their roster promised over the summer. The Steelers, meanwhile, are mired in recriminations, have dropping attendances and a siege mentality forming in the dressing room as players try and work out who's next to be cut.

But, saying all that, there's still a nagging little voice in the back of my mind...

Perfectly set up for an upset, really, isn't it?

Nottingham v Edinburgh: This pairing, meanwhile, could well see a split, as well as Edinburgh finally announcing their presence on the scene in similar emphatic fashion to their six-two win over Sheffield in midweek. After now being knocked off the top the Panthers need to keep momentum going-this weekend will not be taken lightly, otherwise the East Midland fanbase will be howling with protest almost as loudly as the Caps fans scream with joy...

SATURDAY

Newcastle v Coventry: Last time these two teams met, the Vipers took the Blaze for everything they had at the Skydome, playing a relentless grinding style which simply didn't give their skilful opponents any time to play. Up on Metro Radio ice, and garbed in their horrific Hallowe'en jerseys, they'll try and do the same. However, this is a different Blaze team to that of early October, and so the result is well and truly up for grabs...

Hull v Cardiff: More fireworks could be in prospect as a banged-up Stingrays side take on the streaking Devils for some Hallowe'en Havoc in Hull. With nothing to play for but pride, Hull coach Sylvain Cloutier has spoken of the Stingrays' need to get back to winning ways on their own ice, and this game, with Hull and Cardiff's simmering rivalry and the Devils flying high, would be a hell of a way to get that journey off the ground...

SUNDAY

Newcastle v Hull: These two teams meet for the first time this season in the North-East. Last season, this game wouldn't have merited more than a passing glance in the calendar, but with the Vipers clawing to stay near the top of the Elite League pile and the Stingrays trying to get off the bottom, it's a classic upstairs-downstairs battle...even if there'll be more graft than glitz on show.

Coventry v Cardiff: The friendliest heated rivalry in British hockey begins again at the Skydome, with Cardiff now a team to be seriously reckoned with. The Blaze, too, will have their own ideas as to how to dispose of a Devil that's outstayed its Hallowe'en freedom, and in front of two sets of passionate fans, no quarter will be given or asked for...Hallowe'en may be Saturday, but be prepared for a thriller nevertheless..

There you go..one weekend previewed...

Slightly Sickened Midweek Musings...

"Vultures circle around
Feathers float, wings flap, beaks pound"
The Distillers: "Dismantle Me"

From the Breakaway's sickbed, a slightly-fevered stream of consciousness for a Wednesday evening...

Anyone in South Yorkshire who isn't panicking now doesn't really understand what's going on:...You can't hide it any more, Sheffield. No positive press release on the planet will drown out the screams of alarm coming from the Steel City. You have serious, serious problems, and everyone knows it.

Yes, you lost six-two to Edinburgh last night. That's fair enough...after all the Caps are a very fast-improving team and appear to have unearthed an absolute gem in Simon Lambert, who is already looking like this year's successor to Colin Hemingway and Mark Hurtubise-he's scoring at over a point a game so far after coming in relatively unheralded from the CHL.

But the major point about this loss is that you let Andrew Sharp score...as soon as that happens, and even bearing in mind the fact that by the laws of averages a puck is bound to hit his rear end and go in at some point during the season, you've got problems. The defence look unsure of themselves, Kevin Bolibruck is a shadow of his former self, Joey Talbot looks, quite frankly, uninterested, and Stephen Wood has a massive shot on him but not much else. As for Andrew Verner...the best nettie in the league does not, under any circumstances, make a habit of letting in six goals on 25 shots.

It's disorienting looking at the table and seeing Steelers sixth. Even more so when you bear in mind that Edinburgh, one point behind them now, have played half the number of games they have. After this weekend, if results go right, the Steelers could legitimately be bottom. And then watch all hell break loose.

I wonder if Dave Simms is regretting his "little teams aren't worth it" speech over the summer yet, now his giant of British hockey is slowly being brought down with a bang...

Just think of it as "violence to stop violence":...Those of you who follow the EIHL may have noticed the recent upsurge in the number of fights involving Sean McMorrow, after the early season saw few players willing to take on the big Canadian. This, apparently, is due to him now acting like an old-style gangland enforcer demanding "favours" for protection-the word going around the league is that he's spending warm-up having words with those he thinks might drop 'em on the opposition team, and saying "fight me, or I'll go out and run the living hell out of (insert star player here)". It smacks to me of a somewhat drastic way to earn your money-after all, there's a barely concealed threat to injure in there...but if it works, then so be it.

But then, with the merry-go-round working overtime, maybe he has cause: It seems this year is already a bumper year for team changes. Hull and Belfast are the biggest offenders, but only two teams (Cardiff and Coventry) have exactly the same roster as they began the season with. So-here's a question for you to ponder as you keep an eye on tonight's games in Nottingham and Cardiff (more on which this Friday)...are people more willing to pull the trigger, or is there, for whatever reason, just a weird coincidence floating around this year?

And finally...: I really don't have a joke here-because there isn't one. It's just a bit...well, watch it yourself (warning-adult themes). Theo Fleury, easily the player to produce the biggest amount of controversy during his time over in Britain, has appeared on ESPN talking about a secret that's haunted him all his life, and his well-documented drug abuse. And I defy you, if you've given him a yell of mickey-taking or anything during his time over here, not to feel a little...well, bad about it.

Theo Fleury on being abused during his junior career

Wow. That might explain a little...

That's your stream of consciousness for a Wednesday...

Join Us...(We Have Cake!)

"Gotta meet the plane so I can get my monkey
Teach him to be cool, but a little bit funky"
Butthole Surfers: "Dracula From Houston"

There's no monkey...but hopefully, minimalistic and bare though it is, there is a little more funkiness in the world...the Breakaway has followed the lead of Five Minute Major and now has a Facebook fan page!

So come join the army...and feel free to slate or praise as you will...after all, this place ain't gonna get any better unless you tell me what I'm doing wrong...

Don't forget Double Overtime below, as well...

Double Overtime, October 26th: Welcome to the Red Light District...

"We can start the fire, that will light up the night...
We'll watch it burn together on our respective sides"
Underoath: "I've Got Ten Friends & A Crowbar That Say You Ain't Gonna Do Jack"

The weekend just gone in the EIHL was, definitely, not a weekend for goalies. The pucks hit mesh with monotonous regularity around the league, with the highlights being Cardiff's 9-2 thrashing of Newcastle on Saturday night, Edinburgh and Sheffield sharing an eleven-goal thriller with the Caps winning 6-5 on penalties at the Hallam...and Cardiff then coming out on the wrong side of eleven goals as they lost six-five to Nottingham on Sunday...

Which means, I suppose, that the rest of us should feel cheated. But the points help to numb the pain...: This weekend also saw a few teams who stayed back on planet Earth, with Coventry having a relatively pedestrian four-point weekend, scoring only ten goals over the weekend yet winning both games, including a dominant performance on Sunday against a Sheffield team who, despite already rejigging themselves quite extensively (a theme which we shall return to later this week, by the way). The Blaze now finally look like they're clicking...

If this were the nineteenth century, then he'd already have been burned for witchcraft: ...aided enormously by the stellar play of Peter Hirsch in net. Here is a goalie who seems to consider a weekend wasted if he hasn't produced that rare category of save known as the "HOLY ****!" save, named after the reaction it inevitably provokes. He only got the one game this weekend as Tom Murdy was given the start in Hull on Saturday, but it took him only nine minutes for this weeks' example-a stunning flinging up of the stick hand while face-down and prone on the ground mid-roll and the net wide open in order to divert a Matt Hubbauer blast over the bar when the puck had rebounded straight to the Steelers forward in a melee. Much more of this and he won't need a plane ticket home-he'll just take a quick walk over the North Sea...

When you're letting in two hat-tricks, then maybe it's not the best night for your man-coverage...: Newcastle, on the other hand, and more particularly Michel Robinson, will be the toast of...erm, Cardiff this Monday, after Mark Smith and Brad Voth scored hat-tricks against them on Saturday night in a 9-2 win. Couple that with a home loss in Whitley Bay against Belfast on Sunday, and you have to wonder whether the Vipers are running a little dry on venom at the moment...

While one star falls, another rises...: Meanwhile, Belfast, aided by new signing Jeff Szwez (seriously-the only player with less vowels in his name to play in Britain is Chris Szysky, and that's only if you don't count "y"...) have earned themselves another four-point weekend, shutting out Nottingham on Saturday before the aforementioned win on the Sunday...

And, if you weren't convinced Michel Robinson had a bad weekend...: Sean McMorrow earned himself 1+1...

Speaking of the biggest Giant:...he and Kevin Bergin are building a nice little antipathy to each other-once again they scrapped off the opening face-off on Saturday, meaning that they've now exchanged pleasantries of the most hostile kind in every Nottingham-Belfast game so far this season. Stuff the "Matej Kralj scoring v every British team" streak we followed earlier this season-this rivalry could become the stuff of legend. Well, excited conversation, at any rate.

Something stirs behind Hadrian's Wall: Edinburgh, led at breakneck pace by Simon Lambert, are raising a few eyebrows now they've caught up with the preparation-two penalty shoot-out wins this weekend, in Sheffield and at home against Hull, mean that they are already off the bottom of the league and only one point behind Sheffield despite having played only half the number of league games...win even half of those in hand and suddenly, they could be in the top four...

Meanwhile, this weeks crisis in Sheffield:...There really is something wrong with the Steelers, but it seems no-one can put their finger on it. Certainly on Sunday night, they looked...well, the best word I can think of is ordinary. Their aura of being a "big" team, at least on the ice, is well and truly missing...6th in the league, 8 points behind the top 4...maybe the changes aren't finished at the Hallam just yet.

Hull's PR machine continues apace: You'd think, with the departure of Rick Strachan, that the relentlessly-upbeat press releases I used to mock so mercilessly are finished-Newcastle, in fact, have been the closest to mockery this year (leaving aside Mick Holland in Nottingham-anyone can shoot fish in a barrel, after all, especially when you get gloating, self-hyping stuff like this .) But Hull are back in the game with a truly wonderful effort of praising mediocrity (if the best postive you can find is "we tried hard" then you ARE trying too hard in the PR stakes) from Konstantin Kalmikov after their OT loss to Edinburgh gave them their solitary point of the weekend.

Doesn't that press release just scream "damage control" to you?

And, speaking of damage control, here's where I should stop...

There's an article in the works for Wednesday about the high turnover of players so far this season and possible reasons for it, as well as a mini-Round the Rinks for the midweek games this week due on Wednesday, ...until then, keep keeping your eye on the puck...

Round the Rinks, October 23rd: Scream of Anger

"You can burn it all
Rally around the table
If you want to just argue out
The last scenes of us"

Fightstar: "Paint Your Target"

The Elite League is in trouble. And this time, it's fact. There are documents doing the rounds on all the forums showing that the company that owns it haven't filed any accounts since they took the league over. If they don't file them this time round, then the company gets wound up, and shut down.

Meanwhile, we have Newcastle fans being told that, if they don't travel with their team to Whitley Bay, in the numbers of 1500 at least, then the Vipers won't survive. We have Edinburgh's owner, Scott Neil, sending out a press release basically admitting that the Elite League is becoming more and more expensive. And we even have Todd Dutiaume, Fife's coach, admitting that the Flyers should be playing at a far higher level than that of the SNL, except for the fact that they don't want to join such an unwelcoming and complicated league...

British hockey in its current form, in any league form, is unworkable. And it's nothing to do with import limits, Brits' wages, wage-caps or lack of them, or even the lack of the junior systems.

It's about pure human ego.

We are constantly told that those in power have the best interests of the sport at heart, That it's always somebody else's fault that the EPL and EIHL can't mix, or that the clubs don't talk, or that no-one can agree on import limits.

Bollocks. It's the fault of every single owner. GM and, for all we know, tea lady in the sport. Equally.

I know that I'm only seeing this from the viewpoint of a slightly-jaundiced fan, but it seems to me that any time you get something like this happen, there seems to be far less time spent on actually working out a solution then there is in saying whose fault it is that one wasn't found. Sarky press releases, claims of misplaced pride, and God only knows what else-in fact sometimes you think that the only person who hasn't been blamed for negotiations breaking down is, well, Brad Voth...

Maybe what the top league in Britain needs is what's coming-a meltdown.Maybe the fact that the top league in the country is seemingly about to go up Brown-Stuff Creek without a paddle, yet again, and most likely leave the biggest clubs in Britain in serious danger of being without a league to play in (you can't seriously see them accepting a drop to the EPL given the Arctic relations between the two of them, can you?) would be the best thing to make those running our sport realise that you don't just run a hockey team for the ego boost, or volunteer to be on the governing committee in the hope of getting hold of a free junket or two...you do it because you want to keep the sport which is a massive part of thousands of people's lives running in a way that doesn't make even hockey's most ardent fans think the off-ice side of British hockey is an absolute, genuine rib-tickler of a bloody great joke...

Now for the weekend preview:

SATURDAY

Hull v Coventry: A one goal defeat in the Skydome last time these two met and another new import coming in on defence for Hull means that this could be a close one, especially as both teams, for different reasons, need to win, and win convincingly...

Belfast v Nottingham: This is a close one...and should be a hell of a game to watch on GiantsTV-two teams who have already proven themselves to be offensive powerhouses, the Giants doing so only last week, in fact, meeting in a run-and-gun battle which will see two very tired goalies by the end of it...

Cardiff v Newcastle: Don't expect pretty hockey in this one. That's more likely to be over in Belfast. This game will be all about which team can work the hardest. And frankly, at the moment, until the final hooter goes, it's a toss-up.

Sheffield v Edinburgh: Half a team plays half-awake, as injury-hit Edinburgh play a Steelers team who, quite frankly, haven't reached their potential this season. They have another chance this weekend to convince their fans that maybe, an injection of new blood is all they needed.

SUNDAY

Nottingham v Cardiff: Revenge will be the only thing on the Panthers' minds after their 6-2 drubbing at the hands of the Devils last week. Cardiff, on the other hand, will happily settle for "same old, same old" this time round...

Coventry v Sheffield: The Skydome could be a warm place this Sunday. Coventry v Sheffield is always a crowd-puller if not a crowd-pleaser, and this game should be a tight, hotly-contested addition to that group...especially with two fervent sets of fans going head-to-head off the ice as well as two fiercely-competitive coaches on it...

Edinburgh v Hull: The battle of the nearly-men takes off again-"nearly" in the sense that both of them are perhaps one player short, still, of challenging the big boys based on the early evidence, but the scrap will be all the more ferocious as both teams try to scramble over each other on the way up...

Newcastle v Belfast: This game is a classic example of the aristocrats versus the blue-collar, at least in styles of play. On the surface saying that the Vipers can win this is about as clever as, say, a racist attempting to defend his beliefs on Question Time. However, this is not the Vipers team of old, and the Giants, for all their razzle-dazzle, are vulnerable...

And there's your weekend preview...

Double Overtime, October 19th: Rumours of War

"How long can you hold your breath?
While you hold mine again and wait
Just to watch you perform the great escape..."
Moby ft. Azure Ray: "The Great Escape"

We're not even out of October yet, and already the EIHL is in trouble. I should have known it would be a bad weekend from the moment my computer failed on Friday just as I tried to post Round the Rinks...hence the lack of it for a second successive week...

Well, that might be something of an overstatement-after all, there are still eight teams in it and even those paragons of virtue in the EPL aren't exactly raking it in-as perhaps evidenced by Manchester's raising of their own walk-up ticket prices by one pound recently. However, the latest whispers going around have Newcastle struggling again, and rumours of trouble in Edinburgh are made at least semi-official by a downbeat statement from Scott Neil, which you can read and draw your own conclusions from here.

Anyway...that is perhaps a topic for another post-we're here to look back at the weekend, and so we shall...

"Best" d-man in the Elite? Maybe "mouthiest" was the adjective you were looking for: James Sanford, brought in to steady the ship in Hull and expected to play a big role in Saturday's game in Coventry, particularly with Pavel Gomenyuk missing, was a shining example of how not to do so as he managed to earn himself a misconduct barely five minutes into the game-by disputing an off-side call. Poor, James, poor. At least sit for ten minutes for something worthwhile, like a goal...

Speaking of goals...or more accurately goal-judges, aren't they supposed to be neutral? We had a bizarre incident in the same game (which Blaze won 5-4, by the way) where a centering pass went right across the net, Tommy Sandahl appeared to collide with the goalpost sliding across to block the resulting shot, was piled into by James Hutchinson and the net went flying about half-a-second before the shot was released (wide). No goal. And no goal-light. The whistle goes, the home crowd roar, thinking the puck has hit the net...and, after a pause of at least two full seconds...on comes the light. It was quite rightly disallowed, but that was possibly the finest example of twitchy-finger-syndrome in a long line of examples at that particular end of the Skydome-it's bad when referees tell you they're specifically told NOT to ask that particular judge's opinion at dicey moments...

...and should-have-been-goals: On to Sunday now, and a bad-tempered yet spirited game in Nottingham which saw the Panthers come out on top against Coventry, regaining pride after being absolutely mullered 6-2 in Cardiff the night before. However, but for a bizarre Luke Fulghum miss, in which he received a pass from maybe a foot away with Kevin St.Pierre hopelessly out of position and somehow scuffed his shot wide, or an unbelievable Peter Hirsch glove-save on Saturday night in the final seconds, a Coventry team who won one and lost one could have either been celebrating four points or ruing getting none. It was that kind of weekend in the Midlands...

But, just to show that it happens to everyone: Nottingham, who were woeful by all accounts against a silky-smooth Devils team on Saturday, thus creating the perfect storm for a tanking, played like genuine title contenders on Sunday night-it appears "backlash" is not just a word but almost a motivational tool in Corey Neilson's world...

It's not a bad way to make a debut, really: Steelers had two new players in their line-up this weekend, as Matt Hubbauer registered goals on each night and an MOM on Sunday, and Stephen Wood, who looks to be the next Steve Munn, only a bit bigger, landed from America and was immediately given the responsibility of leading the defensive unit. He didn't do too badly as the Steelers won twice against Newcastle, and picked himself up an assist in the process...

Welcome, Belfast...we were wondering when your stars would turn up:...and they duly did against a luckless Hull, who were hammered 8-2 on Sunday night. The Giants completed a goal-fest of a four-point weekend which began with a 9-2 hammering of Edinburgh on Friday night...which was the cause of much joy over on the GiantsTV webcast...

Although, I'm not sure which is stranger....Me watching part of the cast but somehow completely failing to miss being mentioned (well, the Breakaway was, anyway-and even though I missed it it made my Friday when I found out, so thank you to both the GiantsTV bunch and those who are now possibly reading as a result) or Sean McMorrow getting MoM despite failing to get on the scoresheet in any way, shape or form...I've heard of "doing the things that don't get noticed", but come on, that's ridiculous. Maybe he just makes REALLY good period-break oranges...

(and yes, I am fully expecting him to beat the hell out of at least one Blaze player before scoring a hat-trick on his first visit to the Skydome now-peace, hockey gods, it is but gentle mockery...).

And how about those Devils, anyway?: Like their New Jersey namesakes, they appear to be revelling in a style of play that's ugly but, seemingly, very effective-the aforementioned beating of Nottingham was followed by a win against Edinburgh on Sunday...and yet no-one appears to have really noticed that they're quietly becoming a very effective hockey team...

I know it's a bit short...but there's your weekend review...

Double Overtime, October 12th

"And all, all the fear and all the anger falls away"
boysetsfire: "Handful of Redemption"

This weekend was a good one-and teams finally seeming to get themselves on track was a fairly common theme in the Elite League. I rip into both Belfast and Coventry on Friday, and both of them promptly go and get themselves four-point weekends...and, in Blaze's case in particular, finally look like the type of team their fans hoped they would be.

It seemed something of a perfect metaphor this morning that, as I walked back from town after far too long a night (it's OK-there was a perfectly good birthday-related reason for being out, and I took today off work in anticipation of such an eventuality), the sun broke through the clouds over the Skydome and bathed it in the kind of dawn light you normally only see in postcards. For several teams in the EIHL, maybe the clouds of the early season are starting to drift away.

Anyway-on to the weekend review:

If nothing else, it's got to be in the running for quote of the weekend: On Saturday night, I was drifting around after the ENL game in Coventry when I ended up sliding into conversation with a fellow Blaze fan who'd not made the trip up to Sheffield. He was checking the scores on ih-update when he noticed that Sean McMorrow had had a fight with Brad Voth after fifteen seconds, and mentioned this and how he thought that Belfast's enforcer seemed an utter waste of money. This led him very quickly, and almost out of nowhere, into an inspired reworking of "Tomorrow" from Annie. Unfortunately, some of it is probably too...well, controversial to print here in full. Well, that and I can't remember some of it for sure. But it was possibly among the most surreal moments this season will produce as he just broke into an off-the-cuff song...the first verse went something like

"You'll get a shift soon....McMorrow!
Even though you're rubbish and your skating...lets you down
Cause you're just a goon...McMorrow!
And your stupid pens, they make the Giants fans...all frooowwwwnnnn...
McMorrow! McMorrow!
We love you, McMorrow!
You're a guaranteed pow-er-plaaaaaayyyy!"

Of course, the Giants won in the end (and did the same on Sunday night in Cardiff, after penalty shots) which takes something of the sting out of the mockery, and after that first verse, the song lost its lustre somewhat as it descended into swearing...but even so, that song will be in my head the first time the Giants come to town...

"That big red button there. The one marked "PANIC!". Press it. For the love of God, press it now!": Sheffield are officially in the doldrums. A 4-1 loss to Coventry on Saturday night in which they were described as "lacking in ideas" and "simply not good enough" from those who travelled, says to me that the Steelers now have some real problems-and makes me wonder how long before changes are imminent. Sheffield has never been a town to accept mediocrity, after all....and a 4-1 win in the Yorkshire derby against Hull on Sunday came too late for Jeff Hutchins, who has been released today despite scoring in that game. Matt Hubbauer is his replacement...

Heckle of the Weekend: Nottingham, 3-0 down in Coventry. Kevin Bergin receives the puck in open ice with a free shooting lane at Peter Hirsch's net as the goalie is out of position...and miscontrols the puck, allowing a Blaze defenceman to nip in and take it. He then misses an attempted big hit by several feet, Blaze head up ice...and Dan Carlson scores. Next shift, he drifts slowly round behind the back of the Panthers net as a whistle goes, followed by Corey Neilson, who is serenaded with a brief but loud chant through the plexi, to the tune of "We're Gonna Win the League" of..."You should have kept Molin! You should have kept Molin! 'Cause Bergin's utterly useless, cause Bergin's utterly useless, cause Bergin's utterly use-less....ya should have kept Molin!"
Bergin's glare told everyone behind the net exactly what he thought of that one...

Statistics? They prove nothing: Further proof of this was seen in the same Coventry-Nottingham game, as the Blaze recovered from an early setback (well, Jason Robinson did after being fairly convincingly beaten in a fight by Dominic D'Amour) to annihilate the Panthers' game plan in the second period, scoring three unanswered goals and two more, including a killer knife-through-the-heart goal from Greg Chambers just as two goals from the Panthers had threatened a frantic finish by pulling it back to 4-2. The best player on the ice? Dan Carlson, who, it had been muttered recently, including on here, had looked somewhat out of sorts offensively this season. Not on Sunday, he wasn't...two goals and being almost uncontainable is a hell of a way to answer any critics.

And just by the way, if you look for the term "offensive shootout" in the dictionary you'll find "see Blaze v Panthers": The shot count in this game...36 on Peter Hirsch, 43 on Kevin St Pierre. Yikes.

This could be one to watch: Edinburgh and Newcastle, in a pair of battles in the frozen North, split a weekend which saw fights, match penalties, a pair of close games and ANDREW SHARP SCORING!

Hold on, I just had to re-check that. Yes, Sharp scored. It's on the stats and everything.

But anyway...the games themselves were spirited affairs, hard-fought between two teams who may, now, be starting to believe that they're not there just to fill the lower playoff places....

Just going back to the shot counts...: It appears that, on Sunday at least, the defences around the EIHL took the night off. The least number of total shots fired in a game yesterday was seventy-two in Cardiff (38 to 34 in favour of Belfast). And they say that the Elite League is boring...over one genuine goalscoring chance a minute is a fairly decent average, really...

There you go-there's your weekend review...

Round the Rinks, October 9th: Dust, Straw, and Feathers

"Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers."
Lord Byron.

He may have been mad, bad and dangerous to know, but it seems that Byron, in between writing some quite-good love poetry and future exam fodder for Eng.Lit students everywhere and/or fornicating with everything in sight, could have pretty much summed up every hockey season, or at least the period between August and November. Crazy things happen as teams are settling in for the season proper after the opening skirmishes...and it is usually, come the end of the season, of little consequence. However, that doesn't mean it isn't interesting...look:

Tell your statistics to shut up. Or at least whisper-you're scaring the Coventry fans: A stat for you: as of today, the top scorer in the league, Nottingham's Jade Galbraith, has scored 20 points. This is one more than the Blaze top line of Derek Campbell, Dan Carlson and Adam Calder combined.

No, really. Please shut up: Not only that, but the much-vaunted "best offensive pairing in the league" of Carlson and Calder have four goals between them in the same time. Looking down the league, we see names you might expect who have scored more than ACDC combined, proving that at least offensive trends are the same: Colin Shields, Galbraith, Sean McAslan, Mike Berry, Wes Jarvis...

Hold on a second...

Yup, the massive Cardiff defenseman, not exactly known for scoring goals or...well, a soft touch around the opposition's net, has seven already.

I will now light myself on fire. Or, as they say in teen-flicks nowadays...."ooooh, snap!"

Well, no-one can say he's indecisive: Hull have signed a new player this week-James Sanford joins from the ECHL to shore up the blue-line, showing that Sylvain Cloutier is not afraid to make changes, or at least threaten them, early on...

I appreciate that things on here, at least post-number wise, currently have about the same expectation-reality relationship as Ed Courtenay's view of the EPL at the moment (I am told by my Manchester friends that he's not exactly looking overjoyed to be in Manchester, nor over-exerting himself in the effort to tear the EPL apart)...at the moment I'm having something of a AC/DC-esque slump in numbers post-wise thanks to not having Internet time at work and busy evenings...however, I hope this will change as the slump ends shortly. Work is being done behind the scenes. Honest.

Now for the weekend preview-I have noticed the comments but I'm going to answer them in a post I've got in the works-particularly the one from Yotes regarding Molin...


So, first the double-headers:

Edinburgh v Newcastle (Newcastle home leg at Whitley Bay): This could be fun. Two teams who are already raising eyebrows meet (almost)-home-and-away. The Vipers get their first outing in the "character-filled" (read "old") North East hockey temple of Hillheads Rink in Whitley Bay, and the Caps get a chance to avenge their defeat at Hockeyfest, while at the same time get their own season up to the same speed as everyone else's now the Gardiner Cup's out of the way...

Belfast v Cardiff: The Belfast leg of this pair will be live on GiantsTV, and it's an intriguing weekend as we have two teams for whom the word "inconsistent" would be a compliment-both their engines are turning over, but not at all running sweetly like that of Nottingham and Newcastle's. They will both be hoping that this weekend is the hockey equivalent of a jump-start-both teams need to find themselves some rhythm-it's only thanks to the greater struggles of others that they currently find themselves third and fourth...

The rest of the weekend sees a Rubik's Cube of fixtures, as Sheffield play Coventry while Nottingham play Hull on Saturday, before the two away teams return home and switch opponents for the Sunday.

There's all sorts of storylines here...not least the meeting on Saturday between two teams who are under-achieving quite spectacularly so far this season...who'd have thought a Sheffield-Coventry game would see fifth playing sixth, even this early on?

Then, of course, there's the ever-growing rivalry of Blaze-Panthers on Sunday (and these games are getting nastier and nastier over time) with the Yorkshire Derby as the supporting act...if the Stingrays win that one, there could be muttering growing ever louder in South Yorkshire.

Blaze-Panthers, meanwhile, is nothing short of a legalised, localised, bloodless war now-there is genuine hatred amongst Blaze fans for their East Midlands rivals-a feeling which is, at least while the two teams are in action against each other, seemingly reciprocated. Buckle up for this one, folks...this weekend could get controversial in a hurry...

There's your weekend preview...

Double Overtime: Hockeyfest Edition.

"Never too late to stand your ground - Revolution begins!"
Arch Enemy: "Revolution Begins"

Last weekend saw a revolution, a whole new way of watching hockey. A weekend which I will remember for a long, long time for the earth-shaking amazingness of a sight that turned the whole world on its head.

A Newcastle team played a whole game without once resorting to goonery. And won.

And, in other news, Hockeyfest took place up in Sheffield.

Let's take a look at the weekend.

Winning ugly is the new beauty:..it seems, as for the second time in successive weeks a team came to the Skydome, was universally derided by the home fans for playing an "ugly" style of hockey, and proceeded to play the much-vaunted Blaze roster right off the ice. After Cardiff last week, this week saw Newcastle play a similar high-energy, hard-charging style (with Mike Berry particularly prominent) which the much-hyped silky skills of the Blaze seemed unable to break through...a 5-2 victory was just reward for the travelling side..

Now that's the kind of injury we'd like to have: Kevin Bergin-who let's not forget it was announced last week would be replaced with Johan Molin on the Nottingham roster for Hockeyfest due to carrying an injury-seemingly made a mockery of his own team's medical staff by scoring two goals, fighting Sean McMorrow and assisting on one other as the Panthers beat Belfast 6-2 on Saturday night. Clearly, the man has a superhuman pain tolerance. After all, no-one is saying that Nottingham may have (gasp) overexaggerated his injury to gain a potential advantage on Sunday, surely?

Return flight from Sweden: £200. Week's wages: £400 (est). Flying several hundred miles, and then only playing 40 minutes of hockey, including missing a sitter, while the team who brought you back in specially are thrashed 6-0 by their most-hated rivals (whatever they try to claim about Sheffield): Priceless:...although of course the fact that Bergin not only happened to be only injured enough to miss Hockeyfest, but that his replacement also happened to be far more suited to four-on-four hockey, at least in theory, was little more than a fortuitous coincidence. Honest.
Either way, this blatant manipulation of Elite League rules didn't work out well for the Panthers, as Coventry, even faced with Molin, were simply unstoppable after their capitulation against Newcastle the night before, putting six past Kevin St.Pierre while conceding none in their quarter-final.

Tick, tick, tick...:...goes the time-bomb in Sheffield. Saturday's dour 2-1 home loss against the fast-improving Cardiff Devils was, reportedly, watched by a crowd of only 1800 hardy souls. The team are now down to sixth in the league, and even their win in Sunday's Hockeyfest may only be papering over the cracks at the moment, particularly as other teams are improving steadily as they begin to gel. There are hopes in South Yorkshire that the win over the weekend will finally drive some belief into what has been a strangely subdued Steelers season.
But, if it doesn't, then there could be some serious ramifications for British hockey as a whole...what happens if the lean times continue in a city used to only the best?

And, continuing the theme: Belfast, too, are a team which, while not in trouble, aren't exactly providing the pyrotechnics that their fans expected-much more of a damp squib. Sean McMorrow can't find anyone to fight, Pierre-Luc Faubert isn't living up to the hype so far, and only Pat Bateman and Colin Shields are scoring reliably. Like the Blaze, they had real trouble against Newcastle-a side who, by all the wisdom of pre-season (including mine) shouldn't be doing as well as they are with a team full of blue-collar workers, but seemingly lacking the scoring flair of the Elite League aristocracy. With the season now running into the darker nights of autumn after starting in the glowing hopes of late summer, reality may be kicking in in Northern Ireland too...

Then, there's Coventry:...another side who are having to work hard to win round their fan-base at the moment-the Blaze are a team who seemingly are still searching for their identity. If anything, they remind me at this early stage of a traditional Nottingham side...full of talented parts which, by all the laws, should already be meshing into a sweet-running machine. Somewhere, though, like Belfast and Sheffield, there is dust in the gears-they come up against the tiniest bit of grit and almost seem to grind to a halt, just as they did on Saturday in front of a first stunned and then progressively more restless crowd...

So, was it a success?: The general consensus from Hockeyfest seems to be "this, if used properly, could be huge". A day which saw reviews ranging from "a nice diversion" to "absolute genius" from those friends I've spoken to, it's certainly opened a few eyes amongst both traditionalists and the newbies as to just what can be made of the sport in this country. Granted, it's nowhere near perfection yet, but, like Newcastle's form this season, it's a hell of a start-now everyone just needs to work out the best way to keep it going...

And there you go...there's your weekend...