Another interesting week in Steelerland brought us another new player, another five things to discuss, and time to look at some commonly held beliefs:
1> Hayes arrival – This seems to have come as a shock across the league, and leaves us with an embarrassment of riches up-front. Mid-season transfers to other Elite league teams are rare but not unheard of, and if the player was leaving anyway then why not jump ship to somewhere local rather than having to ‘go home’ or try somewhere unknown?
2> Anti-Steelers – Guess it wasn’t just me that noticed that the Hayes trade generated much more venom than the Rutherford transfer to the Giants a day later? Notable twitterati were raging at the ‘behind the scenes tapping up’ that must have happened, without having the first shred of evidence - all because it was Sheffield. Unless these fans were privy to the board meeting, or one of the parties to the deal, then we don’t know what happened, and it’s equally likely that Edinburgh / Hayes / Rutherford partied company due to funding issues, or just players and agents flexing their muscles. (see Edinburgh News clip attached)
3> Capitals crisis – I fear for Edinburgh, as they are losing their top players, have no money for promotions, and crowds of significantly less than 750 are now the norm at Murrayfield. From the outside it looks like they gave it a big push at the beginning of the season, but don’t have the spending power to back it up down the stretch. I hope they didn’t over-commit on their budget, and we continue to see good hockey, but I fear for next season, and wonder if the league will end up propping them up just to keep going.
4> Braehead have the easier conference - I don’t think there’s much argument here, and it’s not just the league table that tells us that. The Clan’s in-conference record of 73.5% of all points on offer is league leading (which suggests they rule the Gardiner), and all four other Gardiner teams have losing records in their cross-conference games (which suggests that Gardiner teams have been worse). BUT Braehead themselves are pretty good cross-conference themselves and have 20 pts from their 16 games played so far – and that’s a better record than Sheffield, Nottingham and Belfast have in their own conference, which suggests Braehead could make a good fist of being in the stronger conference too.
5> Cardiff have a massive home advantage at the BBT – This is true too, as they have the best home record in the league by far with 19 wins from 22, but Steelers aren’t too far behind with 18 from 22, so it’s not all down to that (that advantage is worth about 5 points over the Panthers, and 10 over the woeful Giants). BUT Looking at away form, only the Giants have a better record, and that’s only slight and worth just 2 points - so they are good away from the BBT too, and play big ice as well as most home teams.
So if you extend the current table and take out the differing number of games played and also the percentage of in-conference games completed (Col A) then we are left with the Devils top, the Clan second, with the Steelers a quite distant third, and the rest >10 points off the top. Is it between those two now?
If there was no conference bias at all (Col B) then it would be Cardiff by a point above the Steelers, then a point further back to the Clan and the Giants, and another back to the Panthers – then the ‘trued’ up league table would have five teams within four or five points at the top and far too close to call.
But, I’ll leave you with a couple of final things that gives us Steelers fans some reason for hope: We beat the Panthers again, and their keeper looks dodgier than ours; Roy and Mosienko are finding the net regularly (5-in-4 and 4-in-4 going into Sunday) as we enter the final stretch; we have some cover for injuries, and Tony has dipped into his pockets whereas other teams have had to play short-benched; and of course the team, and importantly Thommo, have done this all before – Lord, Finnerty and their teams have not. It’s not over yet
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