Fixtures 29/30 Oct

[takina]

Sheffield away then home. 

I really wish I had a clue as to what to predict, once again I find myself thinking it could be 0,1,2,3 or 4. 

Currently bottom of our CC group - whilst qualification to the next round is not beyond us, it is looking increasingly hard to see, so hopefully that will add a degree of urgency to our game on Saturday. Missed last week's home game against Cardiff so am looking forward to getting my hockey fix on Sunday, wonder if Ovi will be playing .....

[chunk]

It's going to be interesting to see how Sheffield play in their own rink. They sat back at our place and played a typical road game and I fully expect them to do the same on Sunday. I think it will be difficult for us to get anything against them in that scenario. On their ice, where we need the points more than they do for cup qualification, it will hopefully be more open and I think we could get something then.

[IX2T311]

Could definitely do with winning on Saturday, but a home win would be nice.
If we win on Saturday then I don't think Sheffield will let us take more off them on Sunday too, and if we lose on Saturday we're gonna have a lot to prove on the Sunday. So whichever way you wanna cut it we're only gonna be taking two points, at the most.

Yet this team have been unpredictable to say the least, we could easily walk away with 4 as we could 0, it's just about who turns up and who turns off, here's hoping we all turn up.

[takina]

Oh dear, thanks team, another pants down backside smacked performance. Good to see Carnevale getting mom with 0+3 and good to see our 4th line getting a couple. That aside, the negatives massively outweigh the positives for me, trying hard to like this team but I can't see beyond structural weaknesses and the only image I hold is of a toothless old dog, grizzy but ineffectual. Our goals against figure is beginning to look as worrying as our goals for. Now well and truly bottom of our CC group and, I think, 8th in the league with the possibility that Dundee could leapfrog us if they win their games in hand.

Danny Stewart should be a very worried man I think.

[pjblaze]

Something within the club itself is the problem. Good players don't turn bad overnight yet we've managed to do it for numerous seasons under numerous coaches

[jen]

Feel for Marr don't stand a chance without the D supporting him.

[takina]

Well that was just appallingly embarrassing. We can't score and we can't defend, apart from that we're looking just peachy. Once Sheffield had their nice easy 4 goal buffer (after about 6 mins of P1) they just needed to shut the game down which they did with absolute ease. At the end of P2 when Thommo wanted them to up the tempo, they did so easily. I cannot believe just how totally ineffectual we were - absolute rubbish.

Management need to give Danny Stewart some realistic targets and if we aren't making progress towards them, he needs to be accountable. We are a team that is less than the sum of its parts and yes, there are players that I want to move out, and we can look at injuries but we are poor up front, poor in defence, devoid of ideas and sadly that's more than just an injury / unlucky bounce issue. Am inclined to agree with pjblaze that there is something wrong within the club somewhere

Fair play to Klotz tonight - not only did he hold Fitz to account he also played some decent hockey minutes and well deserved his mom. For a short period of time after that fight Blaze rallied.

Heard a rumour of a rumour of a rumour that Brian Stewart could be out for 5-6 weeks with a concussion. Whilst Marr is game and does his best behind a pretty clueless D, we're not going to win much with him in nets. That said, if the only difference between Marr and Stewart is the margin of defeat, you may as well ice Marr

At least I won't have so many doubts about who I think will win next weekend when we have all the attributes required to enable us to lose comfortably at home against Belfast before then losing comfortably at home against Manchester

Profoundly worried about this team, I really really don't see this group turning the ship around. Once again Blaze have managed to demonstrate how to get things badly, badly wrong

[IX2T311]

On a positive note I think that tonight's performance was better than it has been recently, first 10 minutes aside (which were some of the worst minutes in Blaze history may I add). Aside from the fact we can't score we're actually quite competitive, we were applying a fair amount of pressure and (most of) our powerplays were quite dominant, we were happy to take shots (31 overall, 12, 8, and 11), and we only had 13 minutes in penalties.

On a realistic note, that game was dire. They scored on 2/3 powerplays and we scored on 0/6, we couldn't string together more than 3 or 4 passes before making mistakes and we struggled to penetrate their zone when we needed to. Our offence looks identical to when we had Zajac just now with a different number in the mix, and our defence are giving the puck up so frequently to try compensate when helping to go forwards. But worst of all we manage to concede 4 goals in the opening 6 minutes.
The game winning goal was scored in the 4th minute, how on earth we can let them come out on our ice and score that many against our backup netminder is beyond me, the players have absolutely no excuse for the start of the game, they knew we had our backup in nets and should've been in the right frame of mind to be ready to block for it, disgraceful in my opinion.
Also our only goal had no assists, Bergman, alone, 13 seconds into the 2nd period, don't know what went wrong for Sheffield there but we must've caught them unprepared.

Honestly feel sorry for Marr, he was abandoned at the start of the game and by the time the team were ready to give him the extra protection he needed it was too late, think my heart broke when I saw him drop his head after the fourth one slide in.
Don't get me wrong, he did make mistakes and a few soft shots did trickle in, but that's what happens when you ice a backup, he needed more attention and the team couldn't provide it.
I hope that the fact you repeated rumour 3 times means that Stewart won't be out for a fraction of that long, honestly can't see us beating anyone with Marr, he's a bit weak for a team that's already struggling, needs a lot of development yet.

I'm glad Klotz won his fight, mind you that should've been last night after he ran Stewart (which was clearly why he went for him tonight), but it was good to see regardless, gave the dead game a little life and we had a nice little bit of oomph about us for a few minutes.

I don't suppose anyone knows any wealthy Canadian businessmen that'd love to invest in an under-performing British hockey club? I think I could give a quick recommendation of a team that could use a complete reshuffle of management...


Coventry is a dying team by the looks of things and until we make some drastic changes in either the squad, coaching, or management we're only going to go down from here. Either need a push of money into the club or a new manager that can push money into us, end of the day you win games by paying better players to score more goals and concede less, not by being a nice man and.
I wouldn't bet against us finishing 10th this season, we're showing signs of doing worse than Edinburgh did last year.

Rant over, in reality we won't see big changes for a long while is my guess, but dreaming isn't a crime yet.

[chunk]

Well, where do you start after a weekend like that? I guess the first thing to say is I hope Stewey (Brian) is ok. Watching the webcast, I was about the angriest I've been as a result of hockey - certainly since the Panthers were running Jaeger in the game that lead to the bench clearance. Fitzgerald knew exactly what he was doing, it was a nasty, dangerous check to the netminder's head and I can't believe he wasn't given a match ban for it. Klotz did well not to react straight away, he waited for the ref to award the penalty and we scored on the powerplay. Losing him for 17 minutes in such an important fixture when we're already short of two forwards would not have been good at that point. Stewie should've been taken straight off in my opinion, there was obviously a high chance of concussion from the hit and it's really lucky that he wasn't hit again during the remainder of the period. We had Godfrey and Noble defending when that happened, so two of our more physical players, and Fitzy skated straight in on the netminder, straight past Godfrey who made seemingly no attempt to stop him. That's not acceptable. Sheffield won all four points with that one play. Even if Fitzgerald had been given a match ban, it would still have been worth the trade from their point of view.

As for the rest, I can't tell if we've got worse defensively as the season's gone on or if Stewey had been papering over the cracks and with Marr in, it's highlighted just how bad we are at the back. The forwards clearly lack confidence, which is hardly surprising as every time they go forward they're worrying about what will happen if they lose possession. The coach needs to implement something soon, be it a change in system or another change in personnel, and it needs to be effective because so far we don't seem to have improved since the start of the season (if anything we're worse) and that has to be the coach's responsibility.

It goes without saying that if our number one netty is out for any length of time, we're facing the real possibility of being out of the cup and bottom of the league and conference before he returns. This could easily become the lowest point (on ice) in our history and as others have said, it's ultimately the responsibility of the ownership group. Are we being the best we can be? Doesn't look like it to me - we were better last season and we had less resources than we do now.

[Stuart Coles]

If you follow the graduated return to play protocol (GRTP) for concussion that are broadly accepted across many sports, the minimum time you're looking at being out is 6 days - meaning that Stewart is already doubtful for the Belfast game next week. That also doesn't allow for any complete rest in that schedule either - both rugby and US football (in the UK) advocate 2 weeks complete rest after a concussion before commencing the GRTP, which in my view is perfectly sensible.

For me, Klotz was 24 hours too late with the fight. He was on the ice when Stewart was ran and should've stepped up to the plate then. Doing it the game after is next to pointless. You can perhaps point to the fact we drew 2 periods with Sheffield on Sunday night but to be honest, they barely moved out of 2nd gear for the last 40. They crushed us in the 1st and cruised to victory.

It's not pretty right now, and it looks a long way off from being pretty as well.

[chunk]

Oh and the commentary on the Saturday when Stewey was taken out (not the same as what's on the highlights), along the lines of "He's a big guy, so I'm sure he can take it", "He'll have been hit harder than that in his career, I'm sure", etc - WTF?! I get being biased, but totally playing down what was clearly an injury causing collision, if nothing else, is ridiculous.

[chunk]

Oct 31, 2016 9:56:01 GMT Stuart Coles said:

For me, Klotz was 24 hours too late with the fight. He was on the ice when Stewart was ran and should've stepped up to the plate then. Doing it the game after is next to pointless. You can perhaps point to the fact we drew 2 periods with Sheffield on Sunday night but to be honest, they barely moved out of 2nd gear for the last 40. They crushed us in the 1st and cruised to victory.

I've read this from a lot of people, so I am perhaps missing the point, but he did fight him later on in the game Saturday (after Cantin was jumped following an open ice hit on one of the young Sheffield players) as well as on home ice the next night. At the time, angry as I was, I wanted Klotz on the ice, not in the bin. We were already missing Tait and Cowley from the forward lines, we were about to lose our netminder (as far as I was concerned it was clear he would need to leave) and we were desperate for a result to keep us in the cup. Klotz went on to score a goal and played a lot of minutes both nights. He was my player of the weekend.

[Stuart Coles]

Oct 31, 2016 10:06:23 GMT chunk said:

I've read this from a lot of people, so I am perhaps missing the point, but he did fight him later on in the game Saturday (after Cantin was jumped following an open ice hit on one of the young Sheffield players) as well as on home ice the next night. At the time, angry as I was, I wanted Klotz on the ice, not in the bin. We were already missing Tait and Cowley from the forward lines, we were about to lose our netminder (as far as I was concerned it was clear he would need to leave) and we were desperate for a result to keep us in the cup. Klotz went on to score a goal and played a lot of minutes both nights. He was my player of the weekend.

He fought him later on when the game was dead - both then and the fight on Sunday - were too late, what was the real impact of either of them? The crowd gets a little into the game for the 2nd fight, but that's quashed when the Steelers score a few minutes later. When your goalie is run, someone needs to stand up then and there - you can't wait. Otherwise it sends the message that we're happy with our netminder being run and we'll let the referee deal with it. Brian Stewart is our best player and we have to protect him better than we did. There are very few occasions that I believe you need to 'police it on the ice' - but this is definitely one of them.

Even if Klotz picked up an instigator penalty (which he shouldn't, because the fight would be in response to a penalised hit) - the Blaze would at worst have been even handed with the 2 min from the instigator cancelling out the 2 min from the goalie interference, so they don't give up a powerplay. Klotz wouldn't have known that Stewart would be out, nor should he need to. I want Klotz on the ice as well but his primary reason for employment is his physical presence and standing up for his team mates. He has not been brought in for skills that are sitting on the 4th line. If he isn't going to perform in his main role when it is desperately needed, then when is he?

For me, our best player over the weekend was Carnevale. Creative on the puck and really the only potent force we had going forward. Looks to have formed a good partnership with Bergman as well, which is vital if the creativity is going to be used in the right way.

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Oct 31, 2016 10:56:19 GMT Stuart Coles said:

Brian Stewart is our best player and we have to protect him better than we did.

That, I completely agree with. Perhaps this is as much down to us recruiting a pretty lightweight defence as much as anything else, but something should've changed before it came to this. The sad fact is that whether Klotz had fought immediately after the event or not, we were always going to lose the game (and probably all the games that Stewey is out for), because the defence didn't prevent it in the first place. Fitzgerald was always going to run our keeper - the prospect of an angry Klotz (or anyone one else for that matter) was never going to stop him.

[scott]

Post impact and Fitzgerald was on his knees on the ice. Begin a fight like that and you're asking for DOPS to give you a sit down for a few games as the argument will be that he would be unable to defend himself. Make of that what you will.

Ultimately the defence should have prevented that from happening in the first place.

I hope B Stewy's injury isn't too bad and he's back in the line up soon.

[Stuart Coles]

Oct 31, 2016 13:58:20 GMT scott said:

Post impact and Fitzgerald was on his knees on the ice. Begin a fight like that and you're asking for DOPS to give you a sit down for a few games as the argument will be that he would be unable to defend himself. Make of that what you will.

Wait for him to stand up and then go. Inaction is not an option and makes the team look weak. If Klotz wasn't on the ice, I'd still expect one of the five skaters to have 'had a word'.

[chunk]

Oct 31, 2016 14:39:30 GMT Stuart Coles said:

I'd still expect one of the five skaters to have 'had a word'.

If this had been done by one of the other Steelers then I'd maybe be in agreement, but realistically no-one in this league is going to intimidate Fitzgerald (or McGrattan, or Bordeleau, or Klotz, or a number of other players) enough to make him think twice about doing it again. If his coach (and I'm not saying he did) asks him to run a netminder then he's going to do it, no matter who it's against.

[takina]

I assume Blaze could request a DOPS review if they so chose?

[chunk]

Oct 31, 2016 15:18:46 GMT takina said:

I assume Blaze could request a DOPS review if they so chose?

Yes. From memory it would cost a fee (can't remember how much - £200 or £2,000??), which would be retuned if the review was successful.

For the record, I think we should have it reviewed, but I'm starting to suspect we won't. Hardly anything's been said by the club about the incident.

[Stuart Coles]

Oct 31, 2016 15:24:34 GMT chunk said:

Yes. From memory it would cost a fee (can't remember how much - £200 or £2,000??), which would be retuned if the review was successful.

For the record, I think we should have it reviewed, but I'm starting to suspect we won't. Hardly anything's been said by the club about the incident.

Last season was £250 I think. Based on previous DOPS decisions this year, as an injury was caused on the play, I think there'd be a case to have the penalty upgraded - the rule for goaltender interference would seem to allow for it as well. Is it worth doing though? To make a point, I think I would.