Top Steelers Roster sides from eihl era

[Doom]

I do think Fearnley was the only one of the three not choosing options based upon whether they were good buddies or not with one of the three being particularly obvious about that.

I enjoyed all three episodes, but agree that some of the choices were based on friendship.

For me the biggest judge of a coach is what he puts on the ice. Obviously other factors need to be taken into account like size of budget, ownership, injuries etc.

In terms of Paul Thompson, he was working with the best owner we've ever had, was given a top 3 budget and had a normal number of injuries to contend with. He inherited a championship winning roster and gradually took it backwards.

Based purely on the on ice performances and taking into account budget/ownership, I'd say at best he ranks somewhere in the middle and certainly behind the likes of Blaiser, Adams, Simon and Matsos.

Blaiser and Simon certainly had far more to contend with off the ice in terms of ownership.

Christiansen probably had the worst luck with injuries, but that never got mentioned by Simms.

I thought the whole Thompson love-in was laughable and discredited all their opinions.

I also agree about Simpson. He was superb in the ISL seasons, but in the EIHL he'd lost some speed and was far less effective.

Regards

Doom

[SteelerBlade]

Final Team:

Mike Blaisdell

Jody Lehman
Geoff Woolhouse

Steve Munn - Rod Sarich
Dion Darling - Kevin Bolibruck
Ben O'Connor - David Phillips

M. Roy - M. Dutiaume - C. Fretter
J. Talbot - J. Legue - R. Dowd
K. Simpson - B. Simon - A. Tait
J. Phillips (C) - R. Finnerty - G. Desbiens



Sent from my CLT-L09 using Tapatalk

[Doom]

Last night we did our top 5 EIHL coaches with the consensus of opinion being:

1. Blaiser - We all agreed on this.

2. Matsos - He brought credibility back to our club after a couple of awful seasons. The hockey may not have been the most exciting, but he rebuilt the team and brought us silverware. It's also worth remembering that it was effectively Matsos team that Ben Simon inherited, which is why Ben Simon was a bit further down.

3. Adams - Very close with Matsos for 2nd place and only bettered by Ben Simon in terms of win percentage in the EIHL era. A play-off success in his first season and a league title and two finals in his second season. The hockey was also more entertaining than that served up by Matsos. I would have loved to have seen where Adams would have taken us, because his recruitment had been excellent.

4. Ben Simon - Has the highest win percentage of any Steelers coach and put the highest scoring Steelers team on the ice. Also probably had the most off ice issues to contend with. The only reason he wasn't higher was because he didn't do the recruitment. As we all know recruitment is at least 50% of the job, if you get that wrong you're in trouble. We just don't know if Simon would have been a good recruiter.

5. Aaron Fox - Inherited a mess of a roster and turned it around with quality recruitment. Played entertaining hockey, won us silverware and kept us in a title challenge. Time will tell if he moves up or down the list.

For the record, Thompson would have been 6th.

[Jayboy]

I have a feeling Aaron Fox may end up moving up the list in the coming years too..

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

[TealSteeler]

Certainly wouldn't have the estate agent's best mate as our best ever EIHL coach.

As for my roster that would be:

NM: Bronsard - Lehman

Defence:
Munn - Thomas
Darling - Sarich
BOC - Davey

Forward lines:
Roy - Dutiaume - Talbot
Dowd - Legue - Fretter
King - Mosienko - Simon
Jono - Hewitt - Nelson

Coached by: MWB with Simon, Abel and Matsos as his assistants.

Have to admit that was a tough call to make.