GAME THREAD: Steelers v Storm: Tues 30th.

[Jayboy]

That game last night was typical of the year so far. When we are good its only for a few minutes then we revert to poor, dull and terrible hockey. We have packed out the arena put money into the 50/50. Supported as we should to see lack lustre play without any commitment (not true again Dowd to the rescue). I cannot make my mind up if Fox has just got it wrong this year or the players need a rocket. The only consistent players this season have been the goalies who continually save us from embarrassing results.
Get a grip Fox and get the players to play with some balls. Lets see some hits that show who we are and make teams think twice before they go to the boards. If the Fife game goes the same way I feel I wont be seeing any silverware this year and may have wasted my play off ticket money already.

I would had to that, Rob Dowd and Sam Tremblay who have been outstanding all year and put in exceptional effort every game... A major disappointment for me has been Cole Shudra, I really expected him to kick on and improve year on year but for me this year he doesn't seem to be the player we thought we would get, he stays in the team because he is a valuable brit and as such cant be easily replaced...

[Doom]

Doom, do you know what our face off percentages were for , say , the last ten games ? We seem very poor, especially when we get a power play, lose the face off and finish up behind our own goal having lost 20 seconds of the two minutes advantage.

Without looking back over the game sheets I couldn't say.

The official stats say we're at 48% for the season so far, but I would think it has been lower than that recently because we've had some very poor performances in the dot (Last night, Coventry away etc).

It also seems to me that the opposition often win them much cleaner, whereas ours are scrappy wins where we struggle to retain possession.

Add to that we seem to perform even worse on the crucial faceoffs (ie. First one on powerplay or penalty kill) and you can see it has become a major issue.

I thought the game in Nottingham the Panthers were happy to shoot the puck at Greenfield and get him to hold on, because they were confident they'd win a clean faceoff and set themselves up in our defensive zone.

I'm not convinced it's an issue that Fox can solve without bringing in a faceoff specialist.

Regards

Doom