Five things I learnt this week - Blazing Failures w/e 31 Jan

Photo from @MickGTA

Here's my weekly five things for w/e 31 January - If you've got any feedback please contact me on @Disgu15ed

1. Blazing failures – After just one point this week-end, we’ve only got 50% of the available points against Coventry this year. Add that to a 50% record against Edinburgh, and that leaves us way below expectations against the 8^th and 10^th placed teams. That’s 5 or 6 points dropped compared to previous year’s results (We’re 33 W & 10 L against the Blaze in last five years), and that’s almost exactly how many points we are off top place. Those are the result that we will look back on with the most regret.
2. Worse than the Clan in the Erdhart – The Clan have 20 points from 16 cross-conference games, a 62.5% point haul. That’s significantly better than Steelers 54%, Panthers and Giants 50% and Blaze 45%, so there’s a good argument to support a claim that the Clan are rightfully in the top two. Flip-side is that bizarrely the Steelers, Giants & Panthers all have better records in the Erdhart than the Clan, as although they can beat all of us Erdhart teams, they just can’t beat Fife this year, so go figure that one!
3. Devils march on – It’s going to be close, but if we extrapolate the current results then the Devils just nudge the Clan even including the in-built conference bias – but by just one point! If we average out the conference bias, then the Devils win more comfortably, and the Steelers finish second. Either way it’s so close that a couple of extraordinary results in the last dozen or so games could swing it.
4. CC Semi-final – I think the Panthers inherited the right to the second leg when their ball (or was it a puck) got drawn from the M&S carrier bag a few months ago, but don’t I remember times where we gave that up when the Panthers claimed they couldn’t get ice-time? If we didn’t have Ice Sheffield then the only time we had to hold the home leg was this week directly after the Belfast away game, and with travel, and very little notice to sell 8,000+ tickets that wasn’t a decent option. So we’re stuck with a small capacity rink for a big game. We won’t all get into IS to support the boys, and Nottingham won’t get many tickets for their away fans, we lose out on gate money, and I’m struggling to see a winner except for GM the GM.
5. CHL Final – Is anyone still watching this except me? In case it has slipped your attention, the Frolunda Indians who breezed past the Steelers in the group stages, made it all the way to the final where they will face the Finnish side Karpat Oulu. One leg final on the 9^th of February.

  

One final thought for those of you wishing we had a 5 or 7 game play-off series. Does our in-ability to arrange a satisfactory CC Semi-final give us tangible proof that we couldn’t realistically arrange this type of short-notice series? I don’t think we could hold onto provisional bookings without significant arena deposits, and of course if One-Direction wanted that date then we’d be thrown out pronto anyway, so logistically it’s a non-starter for me. Although it’s odd in a hockey context I prefer the league format anyway, as every game counts, and you can’t have a game off if you want to win the bowl. It’s no good just getting hot for the play-offs, we want to watch good hockey all year.

 

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