New Season
The hockey season is back, and you can follow it all with us right here on BIH.
Stats Centre
We are working on an archive of matches, stats and players from BIH in the past few years.
What a difference since November
What a difference a couple of months makes. My lack of blogging activity on account of wedding and honeymoon commitments has coincided with Panthers’ annual ‘throw it away at Christmas’ dip in form and, as we stand today, their league title chances have now all but evaporated. Rumours that next season’s shirts will include the moniker ‘There’s always next season’ are yet to be confirmed by the club but few could argue that it would be totally fitting.
I have to admit to being a little bit exasperated with Panthers right now and I know that feelings of many within our loyal support are running high. It is hard not to feel that we, the fans, are fed a constant stream of spin without ever getting a full and frank assessment of anything from an official source. Whether it be match reports or players out on the pop until the early hours the output from the club seems always to be a highly sanitised, freshly laundered version of the truth.
I feel that Neil Chiplen summed things up perfectly in his Sky Sports blog back in early January, the general inference being that there is a lack of accountability within the organisation and that this is harming the on ice performances.
Jonathan Zion recently became the latest scapegoat, albeit with some justification on account of his below par performances, picking up the baton from Davey Graham earlier in the campaign. The revolving doors at the NIC must have needed some serious WD40 this season as the number of players heading in and out is surely a cause for concern.
We are told Corey Neilson is a man who is as thorough as thorough can be when it comes to recruitment. So thorough that Kevin St.Pierre and Brock Wilson reneged on their contracts before even arriving, being followed by Dustin Sproat who quickly decided Nottingham wasn’t for him. Not all of the blame can be layed at Neilson’s door, granted, but it hardly looks good does it and it certainly doesn’t represent the sort of ‘no stone unturned’ approach he proclaims to implement.
I do feel a degree of sympathy for Neilson. His commitment, will to win and love of the game cannot be questioned. I just feel he’s at a crossroads, through no fault of his own, and doesn’t really have the skills or experience to tell him which route to take. The lure of a player still somewhere close to the peak of his game is, it seems, too much to resist with the concept of him taking up the role of out and out bench coach rarely seeing the light of day as more than a passing comment in media interviews.
The more cynical amongst the fanbase might suggest that the better value for money that a player coach represents drives the decision to go with a player coach. I’d have to disagree; I don’t think anyone can accuse Neil Black of not providing the resources for the club to succeed with carrying a spare import becoming almost as normal as players with NHL experience joining the club.
To me, and this is what drives my exasperation to a large degree, the club just seems to be in a bit of a muddle. The appointment of long time ‘friend of the club’ Rick Strachan is, despite Rick’s obvious passion and commitment, another example of the club implementing complex solutions to simple problems. I could go on and on with example after example but in the interests of not crying over the proverbial spilt milk it might be better to outline where I think we need to go rather than worry about what’s gone before.
First things first there is one thing that, for me, is absolutely critical for Panthers to do when Neilson’s reign ends, as seems inevitable now, in April. Go out and get a proven guy to coach the side from the bench. No half measures. No promoting from within. We clearly have the money to realise such an aim and if I’m honest I’d have swapped the spare imports we’ve carried year in year out for a genuine, proven leader who’s only role is to coach the side to success.
There are also, I believe, wider changes needed as well. Controversial as this may be I feel that the time for management changes at the club has come. I’m not going to lay into the incumbent general manager or belittle his not insignificant achievements during his stewardship but there is only one way to enforce real culture changes within any organisation and that is by making changes at the top.
I do appreciate the views of many that whilst we continue to get 5000 people week in week out watching the sport in Nottingham then the GM is doing his job. The problem I have with that is it creates too many crossed wires and conflicts of interests to only concentrate on that one aspect of his role. The culture that surrounds the club is wrong, it is not set up for on ice success and the blame for that cannot be lumped entirely on Corey Neilson’s shoulders, far from it. The club needs to decide what it wants to be, an out an out money making machine or a successful hockey club. The two aren’t mutually exclusive but if you focus too much on one you quickly lose sight of the other.
On the ice, fresh from Sunday’s mauling of a beleaguered Newcastle side, Panthers travel to just about the last place you’d want to go at the moment, Cardiff. It’s a big ask for the team to go in there and come away with the points. However, fresh off a one game weekend, a game which was little more than a training session, Panthers might just have the energy and confidence to spring a surprise. New signing Jeremy Van Hoof will make his debut in what the coach now describes as a “5 man, solid D” (does beg the question of what the purpose of our D was before now) after he was cleared to play yesterday afternoon. Live text coverage of the game will again be provided by the excellent The Cat's Whiskers via this link
You can follow Elliott Stanley on twitter: www.twitter.com/elliott_stanley
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| 12th March 2006 19:00 | ||
5-3 |
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| 12th March 2006 19:00 | ||
4-5 |
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| 12th March 2006 19:00 | ||
1-4 |
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| 12th March 2006 19:00 | ||
4-4 |
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| 11th March 2006 19:00 | ||
2-4 |
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| 11th March 2006 19:00 | ||
| Club | GP | W | L | OL | GF | GA | Pts |
|---|
5-8 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
5-1 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
4-1 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
5-2 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
3-7 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
1-1 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
| Club | GP | W | L | OL | GF | GA | Pts |
|---|
- Adam Walker
- Alex Birch
- Andy Pierce
- Chris Gent
- Christopher Beal
- Craig Simpson
- Dave Simms
- Elliott Stanley
- Gareth Chalmers
- James Broughton
- James Gordon
- Katy Madgwick
- Luke Catterson
- Mark Briggs
- Mark Duell
- Mat Young
- Patrick Smyth
- Promotion
- Russ Morrell
- Seanna Murdock
- Stephen Dowson
- Stewart Roberts
- Tom Forster
- Vicki Smart
- William Lyon
