"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...
