Although there were no Steelers games this week, there was still plenty of hockey happening to make sure I learnt five new things this week:
1> Pressure too much for the Clan – Unfortunately for the Purple Army their team have failed to deliver again, and two losses against Manchester leave them 7 points below Cardiff with only 10 games to go. Interestingly for Conference buffs, their in-conference record is now worse than Cardiff and Nottingham, and only marginally better (by 1 point) than Dundee and Fife. What a difference a few weeks make.
2> Too late for the Storm – Another four point weekend lifts them a healthy 14 points above the Caps (!), and seemingly within 1 point of the play-offs. However with games in hand, the Blaze should stretch that to more like 4 points, and all three teams above them are finding form at the wrong time for Manchester. After six wins in a row, I just hope Steelers buck the trend and get two points in Altringham this Wednesday.
3> GB OK in Cortina – Qualification as second seed was always a stretch, and IMO the best team won. We could argue that key refereeing decisions didn’t go our way, or some big players were out injured, but the guys should go home happy enough with two wins and a silver. Our physical play attracted penalties, and slow play ended up relying on big bombs from the blueline - Davey Phillips and Ben O’Connor were our top shooters with 16 & 14 whilst no forwards were in double digits.
4> Title deciding weekend coming up? – Nice and simple maths here if we beat the Storm mid-week. Steelers are effectively four points behind Cardiff, and if we end up with two regulation wins we become title favourites. But it’s a huge IF as we’re talking about the two teams with the best home records this year (90.7% and 80.8%) so sensible money is on two home wins.
5> Cardiff still favourites then? – Whilst I have them winning the league by five points over Sheffield, and six over Nottingham (extrapolating the league table to even out games played and using conference win %'s for future games as below) – that assumes they continue their awesome in-conference win streak (which they need as they have two more in-conference games left than the Steelers), and they aren’t de-railed by the move from the BBT (whilst they are great on big ice, it’s a distraction, and how many games are lost after distractions such as banner raising etc.). Would be too close to call if Sheffield get three regulation wins this week – C’mon Steelers!!!
p.s. By my calculations even with the conference bias then the Clan are over eight points off top spot at the end of the year, and without it they only drop one more as their recent conference form has been so poor.
One final thing is to recommend a new fortnightly show from icetime.tv (http://www.icetime.tv/) featuring 30 minutes of free-to-view EIHL based interviews, views and news. It’s obviously a little Devils biased, but their first show also featured interviews with Seth Bennet and an EIHL stripy (Matt Rose), and their next one will feature the new Ice Arena Wales, so worth searching out. (Linked to blog below)
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