The Official British Hockey Thread 2012-2013

[gazzw87]

My problem with EPL - I'm a Manchester Phoenix fan still - It's a development league. Majority of the players are youngsters. It's slow paced and the skill level isn't all that. This are all obvious points and it's not a bad thing we need a development league, except. The league is trying to be some form of Elite league rival. Manchester dropped from the Elite to the EPL, yet they only charge £1 less to attend their games, where the quality of players aren't worth of the £13 entry fee! I still go and support them because they are my team but it really bugs me. Yes I miss the Storm days (don't we all) But unless we go and support they'll never come back... Except people do go and support yet the team prefers to be in the EPL! With no disrespect - if teams like Hull and Edinburgh can manage it, surely Manchester can!

Speaking of Hull. over 900 in attendance on a Thursday night game is impressive to see! As was the 7,000 at Sheffield for the game v Nottingham

[grazza]

Hi Archi I havn't looked at tables or anything but yeah that seems about right what you have there.

gazz I think Scottish sides were left with little alternative to elite hockey. There isn't really enough teams to form a northern equivalent and I guess the EPL had no interest in a conferencing system. When Dundee and Fife were not in the elite after the BNL days they were basically in amateur hockey but with playing squads probably comparable to EPL without the imports. It was too easy for them and not competitive and fans lost interest. If there were say 8 teams in the north then things might have been different. Though would probably need the likes of Manchester and Hull being prepared to join the Scottish teams and even after than try to see if they could get a couple out of Billingham, Whitley, Solway, Blackburn, Paisley etc So no a semi pro northern league really ain't possible. Fife have a lot of history so as long as they can be competitive the crowds should be decent for them. Edinburgh run a tight financial ship so seem to make it work all be it at the bottom end of the table but usually competing for play off spot. Dundee is a worry at the moment, crowds ain't great though they were during BNL days so taking a long time to try and get people to go back to pro hockey and the recession has hit that city probably more than others. Braehead can only really work at pro level, the arena needs a pro hockey tenant to justify having the ice and boards etc, Paisley Pirates do play there too without a pro team the facility would just not be available for ice hockey or probably any ice sports. Hull seem to have some stability with their player/coach which has helped them put together an improvingly competitve team. Away fans from Nottingham, Sheffield probably give them a wee boost. The new conference system allows the smaller teams more competitve games though so more chance of wins or at least closer games and so better crowds and less bad runs.

[archibalduk]

Woohoo!! We put an end to our winless streak!

The Streatham Redskins spent most of the first period shorthanded, but managed to score two shorthanded breakaway goals during the same 2 min minor penalty. For the most part of the game, they seemed to be playing one forward very high out of their defensive zone which enabled them to get a couple of breakaway chances. For most of the game, however, Invicta were the better team and we had quite a lot of pucks cleared from the goal line.

The second period was very stop-start with quite a few Streatham injuries and two fights. However we did manage to pull a goal back.

In the third we tied it up but then Streatham quickly got another goal to make it 2-3 (another breakaway goal). However our new signing, Anthony Leone, tied it up with a backhanded goal from an impossible angle (most of the players and fans at first thought it had gone behind the goal and gotten caught up in the net). Then Andy Smith scored a phenomenal goal on the breakaway - the goalie bought his deke and then Smith calmly chipped over the prone goalie. Streatham later pulled their goalie and then we scored an empty netter, making the final score 5-3.

Anthony Leone had a phenomenal debut, with one goal and two assists. He was signed today following the departure/sabbatical of Brad Watchorn who is on indefinite leave from Invicta in order to concentrate on his MMA career (he became featherweight champion very recently). Leone formerly played for Invicta a few years ago and was a fan favourite. Whereas Watchorn was more-or-less just an enforcer, Leone is great scorer who can also drop the gloves.

On a different note, when I was reading through the game programme, I noticed there had been two huge defeats for the Slough NIHL Jets in the Southern Cup. Last month they lost 4-19 to Streatham and then last week they lost 1-18 to Chelmsford... I know for the Chelmsford game, Slough only iced two lines and so I'm guessing a similar thing happened against Streatham.

[MWE]

We lost 4-2 to Fife last night allthought Sestito did get a debut goal.

I will be going to watch them play Belfast tonight hopefully we can we and claw a few points back

[archibalduk]

Wow, Fife are unstoppable right now!

What do you think about Pecker being fired? I think it was the right decision. Such a foolish act which could have cost them the game - and I hear he was grossly unfit.

I'm off to Coventry to see them play Nottingham tonight. It's long trip, but it'll be great to see Belesky and Stewart. Am also looking forward to seeing the Leeb brothers and Schutte.

Good luck against Belfast!

[MWE]

On the occaisions that i've seen Pecker this season I thought he was better than Goertzen who seems to be useless also. Hopefully we can sign someone else of the saem calibre.

[grazza]

Great game of hockey in Edinburgh on Sunday night. 5-2 to the Caps over the Fife Flyers. Caps raced into a 3-0 lead in the first and then 4-0 tho Flyers got it back to 4-2 before an empty net goal. Rene Jarolin with a hattrick he has been a great player for Caps and the goalie put in a great performance as he is now back from suspension. Last night probably took a lot out of Fife and Edinburgh showed more physicalness than usual in this derby match, The league is looking very competitive and I would like to think any home team has a chance of beating anyone if on top form, though probably still a bit away from the bottom teams winning at the top teams but it has been really competitive no real blowout scores so far, I love the conference system. Hopefully Fife's win there will give the north conference a bit more respect and who ever is the regular season champs will be on merit whatever conference they are from. If Caps could get in another quality import ideally defence then they would greatly improve chances of play off hockey but I think it will be a battle that can go to the wire and no one racing ahead at the top to win or way behind at the bottom

[MWE]

I went to the Steelers match last night where we beat Belfast 2-1 Tom Sestito was amazing last night scored the first goal assisted the second then had a good fight but he got a 17 minute penalty it was a great the most i've been excited during a match this season.

[archibalduk]

The league is looking very competitive and I would like to think any home team has a chance of beating anyone if on top form, though probably still a bit away from the bottom teams winning at the top teams but it has been really competitive no real blowout scores so far, I love the conference system.

Me too! The conference is such a positive step forward for the league. It is surely the best thing to come to the EIHL since its inception. I'm glad to hear Edinburgh have had a positive result after a challenging past few games - it's great for the game if all teams are in with a shot and we don't see any blowouts.

I headed up to Coventry yesterday to see them beat Nottingham 3-1. It was a good game - Coventry did well to weather the storm during the second period and then really took the game to Nottingham in the third period. Anthony Stewart scored his first goal in the EIHL, but otherwise had a relatively quiet game. Belesky played well despite the fact he was clearly lacking match fitness. He got an assist and had a fight (and arguably won it). I was really impressed with his attitude - he played hard and showed a real gratitude to the fans at the end of the game. This is what he said after the game to the EIHL website:

The atmosphere was great. I have played in arenas with 20,000 fans and it has not been as loud as it was tonight. It was exciting to hear all the chants too!

It was the first time I'd visited the SkyDome at Coventry. It's a really decent arena with very good views - and the atmosphere was fantastic.

Oh, and I must say that Peter Hirsch is a real character. He absolutely loves to puck handle! There were some very shaky moments where he was spending way too much time stickhandling the puck - but he got away with it each time!

On a negative note, Invicta lost 3-8 away at Chelmsford last night. I'm not sure what went wrong yet - the match report hasn't yet been published. It's a shame we couldn't build on the victory against Streatham.

had a good fight but he got a 17 minute penalty

Hmmm that's a new one on me. Sounds like a 5 + 2 + 10... Instigating isn't normally a 2 min minor, I don't think!?!

[MWE]

It was 2 mins for instigating 5 mins for fighting and 10 mins for misconduct

[MWE]

We just beat Cardiff after 3-3 in regular time we won the shoot out this game was for the Challenge Cup.

Also congrats to Belfast for beating Eaters Geleen of Holland 11-1 in Germany in Group B of the Continental Cup

[archibalduk]

A good result for you. It's not easy to beat Cardiff.

I was glad to see the result for the Giants. Here's hoping they can go on and beat some bigger Euro teams - let's show how strong the UK league has become!! They have Landshut (2nd Bundesliga) tonight and HSC Csikszereda (MOL Liga). If Belfast can win tonight then I think they'll surely be favourites to progress from their group.

Invicta were away at Oxford (NIHL-2) today in the Southern Cup. Invicta thrashed them 11-2 (although Oxford had 46 shots to Invicta's 36). Tomorrow we're playing Chelmsford in the South East Trophy. After last weekend's 3-8 loss in the South East Trophy against Chelmsford, I'm hoping we can get a morale-boosting win. I think Chelmsford have already won the trophy, but we really need the win in order to get back on track.

Btw, there are two interesting articles on Blueliner Hockey about the fall of the Ice Hockey Super League, Manchester Storm and the Ayr Scottish Eagles. If you're feeling sentimental (or just want to learn all about it), here are the links:

Part 1 - BISL / Manchester Storm: http://www.bluelinerhockey.com/october- ... ed-part-1/
Part 2 - Manchester Storm: http://www.bluelinerhockey.com/october- ... ter-storm/

Another interesting article I read recently was an interview with James Flavell on the differences between the EIHL and NIHL (he was the goalie called up to cover the Edinburgh goal during their goalie difficulties): http://www.prohockeynews.com/hockey/pub ... ture.shtml

[archibalduk]

Gah! The Giants lost 1-7 to Landshut.

[Doomski]

Landshut is a pretty good team in 2. Bundesliga. They're currently champion from last year. So, no shame to have about that loss !

I'm pretty sure they will try to buy a DEL license in the next few years.

Allright, back to British hockey, sorry for this german off-topic

[MWE]

We beat Coventry 3-0 last night to go back top of the EIHL by 1 point but Belfast have 3 games in hand.

[archibalduk]

Invicta had a good game this weekend. We beat Chelmsford 4-3. We were leading 4-1 until perhaps 5 minutes to go and then we eased off a little too much and let in two soft goals. Nonetheless, it was by far our best performance this season and it was against the top team in the league. The game didn't really mean much as Chelmsford had already won the South East Trophy, but both teams were taking it seriously - hence it was a good result for us.

However next weekend is the real test when we play Romford in the league...

Landshut is a pretty good team in 2. Bundesliga. They're currently champion from last year. So, no shame to have about that loss !

Landshut ended up qualifying quite comfortably. A shame Belfast were unable to progress...

[archibalduk]

Am on my way home from Slough having seen them lose to Manchester 7-5. It was a bit of a scrappy game. Manchester spent most of the game on the attack, but didn't really generate many decent chances. Slough, on the other hand, were pretty leathal and went into the third period with a 5-3 lead. However Manchester scored 4 goals in the third to win the game.

It's pretty incredible to see Tony Hand putting in 25-30 minutes at the age of 44. He got a couple of points too.

Slough's Kieras and Bakrlik played very well for the most part and both have extremely good shots from the point.

This is the first game I've stood by the glass to watch the game. I'd definitely recommend trying it simply to get a new perspective. Slough's rink is so small and the view from the seats is very poor (when I saw Manchester there last January, I couldn't really see much at all because the perspective was so shallow) - standing gives a much better view.

[MWE]

We beat Belfast 5-1 then lost 3-0 to them at the weekend.

We have Cardiff in the challenge cup on Wednesday night I hate going to cup games but my girlfriend has talked me into it

[archibalduk]

Did you hear about the fighting at the Cardiff v Coventry game last weekend? There had been a fair bit of chirping on Twitter beforehand by Olsen and Didiomete. Didiomete tweeted "Can not wait to go to the EIHL's worst city tomorrow and play in front of the EIHL's worst fans. @covblazehockey". So tempers were pretty high when the teams met again last weekend at the Big Blue Tent. During the post-game handshakes, Olson ended up fighting Didiomete (and IIRC also with Birbraer), one of the Cardiff coaches and a fan (who has now been banned for the remainder of this season). Cardiff are investigating what happened and it sounds possible someone could be axed (in addition to the plethora of bans being handed out by the EIHL):



Great result for Invicta against Romford last Sunday. We came back from 2-4 down to win 6-4. We fell to pieces during the second period and let in two terrible shorthanded goals in the first minute of the second period. Our goalie (Moffat) went beserk, belted his stick against the glass by Invicta's bench, and stormed into the changing room. So the coach had no choice but to call a timeout and get our second goalie on the ice! It was pretty close to a sell-out crowd (1,500 is the arena's capacity) which is very impressive for an NIHL team.

[MWE]

Yeah I heard about Olson punched a fan that managed to come down to the side of the rink apperently one of the other players involved hit a coach with a stick from the oposing team not sure who it was though.

[archibalduk]

Yeah I heard about Olson punched a fan that managed to come down to the side of the rink apperently one of the other players involved hit a coach with a stick from the oposing team not sure who it was though.

I think it was Olson and Neil Francis (the Devils' Defensive Coach).

[archibalduk]

The Devils have signed Paul Bissonnette. He should be available for the games tomorrow and Sunday.

Incidentally, I've been following him for a while on Twitter. His comments can be quite humorous (and at times controversial): @BizNasty2point0

[archibalduk]

It's nice to see most of the Challenge Cup games out of the way and now we can concentrate on more EIHL action.

No hockey for me this weekend. My car is out of action and won't be repaired until Tuesday. At least it's only a cup game and it'll probably be a goal rout - it's against an NIHL-2 team. We're on a bit of a good run at the moment (we beat Wightlink last weekend to end their unbeaten run - despite the best efforts of some truly terrible refereeing).

[batdad]

Tony Hand sucks.

[archibalduk]

Tony Hand sucks.

Haha! But your profile says otherwise!