Some musings about Flyers amazing regular season record and our stats. Despite some great efforts early season we were down at bottom, or second bottom as we just weren’t converting the tons of chances that we were making. Coaches Todd Dutiame and Danny Stewart then made minor tweaks by bringing in Ned Lukacevic to replace Andy Contois and brought in Kyle Haines to steady our defence and contribute invaluable points. Rok Pajic made a good start with five goals in his first six games but then his points contribution dried up during serious family health problems back home and sadly he had to be released too. We also began utilising Tim Hartung in a utility forward cum d-man role and I think this has really worked for the team. The acquisition of Ned Lukacevic was one of the keys to our late-season success because Super-Ned added an extra dimension and more versatility. I felt that Contois was too similar in style to Jordan Fulton and Matt Reber and that Ned Lukacevic’s stick-handling skills gave us an extra gear. Initially we were over reliant on Bobby Chaumont’s sniper goals for scoring but during a period when the Boabby went off the boil a little, the flying Fulton and Reber began to run the net more than before. In addition Derek Roehl, who was relatively inexperienced at professional level at the start of the season, began to grow in stature and our third line forwards Gunn and Wilson began chipping in goals at opportune moments. Another factor was that Danny Stewart must have been taking monkey-gland injections, because he became even more jet-propelled than usual. Stewy has so far racked up 39 points, which is only 6 points less than his highest ever EIHL tally with Coventry Blaze, a whole seven years ago. At the end of the regular season Flyers offence had improved so much that we finished fourth equal top scorers, on one hundred and seventy-two goals, tied with Sheffield Steelers. We were only out-scored by Belfast Giants (wasn’t everyone?) Nottingham Panthers and Braehead Clan. Flyers actually scored twenty goals more than Dundee Stars (shows how much they owed to the excellence of Bakala and Rawlyk) and we actually scored four more than Hull Stingrays, with their Tendler-Doucette-Lauzon line and four more than Coventry Blaze who had Ginand (the league’s top scorer) and Adam Henrich too. In early season our defence suffered through injuries and suspensions. A Tim Hartung head injury and Matt Nickerson’s suspension in the first third of his debut game saw us down to only one import defenceman for a short time. The bad injury to captain Justin Da Costa at Dundee saw him out for about twelve games and it was a further four of five games after that before he was up to speed. This meant that our veteran trooper Kyle Horne had to play more minutes than was probably good for his old bones and this period also saw Tommy Muir have to step up to the plate. In the event, Tommy started to play with increased maturity whilst ably backed by Euan Forsyth and Chris Wands. We also missed Matt Nickerson during that over-harsh nine game suspension, but fortunately the big fella has been fairly disciplined since then, despite the regular targeting by wind-up merchants like Chris Frank, Jeff Smith and Jeff Hutchins. I love it when agitators do their utmost to get the big fella sent off, whilst at the same time exhibiting a sulphurous degree of hypocrisy about their own angelic behaviour in the process. Because of injuries and the pressure we have been under to make the play-offs, young Brit forwards Josh Scoon and the improving Alan Anderson got less ice-time than they might have got otherwise. Kevin Regan has performed heroics in so many games and shoot-out contests and when he had to be missing for about four and one half games, our gallant stand-in nettie Blair Daly proved equal to the task. Other musings of mine are: Kevin Regan finished top of the league in shoot-outs with a P6 W4 L2 record, which allied to Blair Daly’s P1 W1 L0 gave Flyers a fantastic P7 W5 L2 record in game-end roulette. As an aside, back-up goalies Blair Daly, Joe Myers (since axed by Cardiff) and Braehead’s Mike Will, all won the only shoot-out that each was involved in. Well done lads. Tim Hartung finished second in the league for shoot-out goals as he scored six goals from nine attempts and was beaten only by Cardiff’s Jake Morrisette with seven goals from ten attempts. Flyers managed to finish top of penalty points, although Coventry’s Kevin Harvey and Braehead’s angelic Chris Frank managed to accumulate more penalty minutes than Matt Nickerson. I haven’t seen an update recently but Cardiff’s Brad Plumton had the most fights (but only managed to finish fourth in the penalty minutes stakes).
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 20:48:44 +0000
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