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...