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...