Hockey Soapbox - Season 3 Week 12 - No Change

Welcome one and all to this week's Hockey Soapbox. It's been a typical week in Steelerland with a lot of recurring issues happening. On your panel this week are your Editor-In-Chief Mark, Co-Owner of Steel Talk Jay Smith, our rant specialist Nathan and the ever honest Fay. What's on the panel's minds this week? Time to get on those soapboxes then.

1. Five Words On Friday

Nothing Out Of The Ordinary

Good Performance against Poor Side

Road Win Against Poor Opposition

Another Win On The Road

2. Five Words On Sunday

No Spark, No Plan B

Thommo Hockey At It's Best

Another Conference Loss Yet Again

Losing the will to live

3. Why are we so bad against our Conference teams?

Nathan: You can try to pin it down to any number of things, but we're simply not good enough. Sure we have players who should be good enough, Dowd, Nelson, Matheson aside though and the depth just isn't there. There is a huge cliff face drop from the 2nd line to the 3rd and it's down to poor recruitment. Wallace, Westerling, Jamtin, are average at best and for whatever reason The (highly disputed) King of Sheffield is a shadow of his former self. Marquardt seems to have gone completely off the boil and unless we're playing Dundee, Armstrong's only contribution is a rather impressive Claude Reins impersonation. Moose gets hung out to dry on a regular basis and Ben O'Connor is having a shocking time of it.

I'm sure we'll end up beating one of them sooner or later but I'm afraid it'll be a case of too little too late.

Mark: We just seem to be found out easily. The coaches in our conference seem to know what we are "apparently" good at and what is our Achilles heel. They do their homework on us, and then outsmart us. We need to be better, do the same to them what they do to us. But with the current regime, they just seem to be stuck with just one idea and it's one idea that doesn't work.

Jay: Our coach is not good enough and should be replaced.

Fay: They’ve recruited well and studied our game plan, which never changes. We don’t take our opportunities well enough. We are losing our discipline. There’s zero spark. 

4. Is Mark Matheson the player of the year already?

Mark: He's certainly been the best of the new imports for sure, and I'm not embarrassed to have his name and number on the back of my shirt this season. And that's not interlinked with the fact we share the same nickname too hehe. He will certainly be up there when the awards are handed out; if he isn't then something is terribly amiss. One signing that Thommo got spot on.

Jay: No, he maybe the best out of the new recruits by a long way but player of the year! Fitzy, Nelson or Dowd all are better.

Fay: Him or Aarssen!

Nathan: Yes he is. Our only decent new signing of the season. Were it not for him I fear our season would already be over. Calm on the puck, makes simple but effective plays. Hardly give away any turnovers. Can't we clone him?

5. Which film would best describe our season?

Jay: Titanic.

Nathan: Groundhog Day 

Fay: Inception.

Mark: I would go for the foreign language film "Downfall".

6. And finally, is the hockey we witness this season worse than the Doug Christiansen time and why/why not?

Fay: No but it’s heading that way. Coach needs to start taking ownership of his teams poor performances! We’ve lost that spark that made our team so special last year. 

Mark: It's not the best and is hardly providing us with "entertainment". Christiansen's hockey really bored me but the Thommo one at present is pushing it close. Fans will start voting with their feet if it doesn't improve. And that simply won't do!

Jay: Not quite but its getting very close...

Nathan: My first game was Big Doug's last game, a 3-1 reversal to the Nottingham Bears so I can't really comment on that but numerous people's comments on social media and Internet forums tend to draw comparisons to his reign when discussing the current regime.

And that's the soapbox this week, Christmas special next week with a difference..

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