GAME THREAD: Steelers v. Panthers. Sat, 1st February.

[Nottonsteeler]

Putting this game in perpective , Panthers deserved it. I wonder what Duba was saying to his defencemen as we continually could not clear out the man in front. AJ could not even clear out Lachowicz. Have they all got the flu that Duba had on Wednesday?

[Clowne57]

Outshot 37 22 tonight. Duba still managed to make more saves than Carr. Were was our fire power. Credit to the Panthers they not only outshot us, they completely out played us in all areas.
Lets hope we can re group and move on.

[Clowne57]

And what is a ‘lurker’?

[Sully]

Panthers just battered us in every department tonight. We looked tired, bruised, leggy and shell shocked. You could see the Panthers commitment, wing men using sliding poke checks to disrupt our break outs.

Bulmer and co just crushed us with hit after hit and we had no response

[Nathan]

And what is a ‘lurker’?

Somebody who lurks.

[SteelerBlade]

We lost the special trams battle, that is all. Panthers PP was firing. Our PP was poor and PK even worse.

[raetiamann]

We simply didn't compete tonight. Out worked, out muscled, out played. Absolutely no positives, except it's just one game. I'm pretty sure AF knows just how bad it was but we have the chance to quickly put things right.

[Greenbunch257]

Oh dear. What were our tactics tonight? Let the Panthers have their own D zone and the neutral zone and we will attack from our Defensive zone. Good god I counted 15 single man rushes from a Nottingham player in the 3rd through the neutral zone without a single hit or challenge coming from a Steelers. The same Steelers side that we are used to high forechecking in the oppositions defensive zone. TONIGHT THOUGH nothing. NADA. Bad day at the office hopefully. But I'm baffled what our game plan was.
Nottingham on the other hand played well. And I did say Herr, Talbot and their PP would be a threat. What was the pp +/- something like 3 from 6 for Nottingham and 0 from 6 for us. Take that and Talbot winning all his face offs. Well the writing was always on the wall and we did nothing to upset them. Hopefully we will have a response tomorrow. And at least Belfast beat Cardiff. Thankfully.

[Joesteeler]

I tire of hearing about an “off night” or “things just not going our way” (Fearnley on the webcast). Our flaws were the same as they’ve always been, and Panthers exploited them while totally neutralising our offence, who had no creative ideas beyond the usual set plays. Other teams will be paying attention to our performance tonight.

Defence has been our problem all year and if we win the league; it’ll be with the worst championship D in EIHL history. Liwing is simply not a good hockey player and every. single. team has had at least three gilt-edge chances, alone, in front of our net and we just haven’t addressed it.

It isn’t a coincidence that our two most embarrassing “off nights” at home have been our two biggest games of the year so far - losing 7-3 in front of a full house to Cardiff, after a successful month, then 1-5 against Panthers after another winning streak.

These aren’t grinding, defensive losses. When we don’t turn up to score, we still concede the same amount, and that makes it a rout.

And, in league action, our wins against Nottingham have either been in OT (having from two down) or a single goal. We’ve been getting away with it on the fumes of “character” for too long and will see more of these turnovers the longer we stake everything on being able to score six goals a game. Panthers are a good team but as we are, we aren’t difficult to work out at all. Crowd our star forwards out and do what you want going forward, you can win without much trouble.

A dreadful night that requires more than closing the book on. We got exposed and there’s blood in the water:

Reared your head again. Nothing to say the past couple months.

One bad awful game in a long run. We went to Cardiff and out played them and took the win.

See you the next time we lose

[Al Murrays Hairbrush]

We were 2nd best in all areas tonight & got what we deserved, lucky for us Belfast took two points, so the gap stays the same.
The Devils lost at home to Coventry the other week, we lose to the Panthers, we're not dead yet, but worrying how easily we were taken apart tonight.
A result is needed tomorrow, and maybe help from others.

Overall, this team had performed far better than I thought they would, and mid season pick up's have been impressive, another improvement over most recent seasons.