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Make Or Break Weekend and Matt Amado Interview

Sam — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:04:01 +0000

The Blue Tongues have just 2 games left in the regular season to make their final push for the 2011 AIHL Finals, their opponent; the always challenging Newcastle North Stars.

The team sit 5th on the ladder, 2 points behind the Adelaide Adrenaline who also play this weekend. Adelaide take on the Canberra Knights and the Sydney Ice Dogs. The Adrenaline wont have an easy time of it, as both the Knights and Doggies will be looking for solid wins.

Matt Amado broke his own AIHL scoring record this season.

The Blue Tongues do have a tougher final 2 games, even if from a purely psychological point of view. The boys in blue have not had too much luck against Newcastle over the course of their time in the league. In the 22 regular season games played since 2005, the Blue Tongues have just 4 wins, and only 1 of those was on the road, in Newcastle. With those stats to dampen the mood, it is vitally important to go into this weekend with BELIEF that they can win.

They need to believe that Matt Ezzy, who has always been a big part of those terrible stats is no longer as good as he once was (just look at his stats this year).

They need to believe that the perfect pass does not exist, and sometimes pucks on net from all locations is key to a victory.

They need to believe that hockey is a team sport, and passing, dumping and chasing are all equally as important as scoring the game winning goal.

But most importantly, they need to believe that they CAN win.

Matt Amado Interview

Finally, here is an interview that Matt Amado did with the AIHL recently, talking about this weekends games. There is no video, so just hit play and listen along.

The games start at 5pm this weekend. Updates are available on the Blue Tongues website as well as all relevant twitter accounts. I believe Newcastle also stream audio play-by-play of the games, so keep an eye out for a link.

Thoughts On Sundays 3-4 Loss

Sam — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 13:58:22 +0000

Wendy and I were at the Suncorp Stadium last weekend watching our team, the Canberra Raiders take on the Broncos. During the game, when we were down 24-0 to the bronc’s, one of the home crowd heckled us, to which a Raiders fan stood up and called back “anybody can support a winning team, but a true fan is there when they lose, too”.

Today, I sadly feel like a real fan.

After Saturdays very disappointing game, we were hoping very much for a better performance today. While the scoreline shows a loss, all is not negative. So here are my thoughts on todays game.

Welcome back #8 Cam Trew. After missing 2 games with a suspension, Cam returned today and was an immediate noticable player on the Blue Line. He’s not an offensive threat, but he gives all he has and is always keen to do what is needed to help the team. Cam stood out today as one of the better players out there, always being amongst the play and getting involved.
CJ was a lot better than the stats show. The box score showed that CJ faced 28 shots, letting in 4 goals. At first glance, you could say these are bad stats, but I feel it is very important to mention that CJ was a LOT better than the stats show. His positioning was great and play consistent. Unfortunately, a diving poke-check went the wrong way for him, which really turn what would have been good stats into what we have, but the play he made was the right one to make at the time.
The Blue Tongues appear to have a major Ego issue among some players. Today was a lot better than yesterdays, but we still saw cases of people opting to hold the puck rather than play as a team. This is a team sport, and this type of play does nothing to help the team win. I could be wrong of course, but from the stands, this is how it looks at times.
The #1 pet peeve I had about todays games was the lack of heart that a few players seemed to have. A sense of having given up on the game was evident in some players. Instead of chasing the puck, some just stood there and let others do the work. If guys don’t give a damn about the game, don’t play. That may seem a bit harsh, but there are people in the stands who pay good money to watch, scream at, and cry for the guys on the ice, and to see some just lazily skate around really pisses those people off.
The Adrenaline Coach spent more time whining about the reffing than he did managing his team. When he did, his own team told him to “shut the F up”, which i found rather interesting.
Once again, reffing was the lowlight of a game on the Gold Coast. I don’t know what is up, but todays game was pretty terrible. Missed calls right in front of the ref, bad icing calls and worse of all, a call for the 4th goal that almost everybody who saw it claims did not actually go in, really ruined the game. Those who follow the team know that the ref today was the same guy who reffed the shocking games a few weeks back.
Someone told me today that the 39 shots we put on net today show our boys DO shoot on net. I disagree. What those 39 shots show is that we put bad shots on net. I would wager that less than 20 of those shots were scoring chances, whereas almost all of the Adrenaline’s 28 were. Our boys love to play down the wing then make terrible passes, or shoot from wide. Just something to think about.
Lastly, Zac Daunt, Jack Conner, Jon Bale, Alex Hall and Ben Spillant need to be get a lot more credit than they’re given. In my opinion the 3 stars off this weekend are pretty much ALL in this list above. Sure, Upton and Amado scored, but it was these local guys who actually played like they gave a damn about the game. They gave all they had, every shift on the ice. These are not the only ones this applies to of course, but these guys were the standout players.

Talking of 3 Stars, here are my 3 for this weekends games, in no particular order. Zac Daunt, Marco Bertossa and Jack Conner.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Northstars

Sam — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 02:46:34 +0000

With just 4 games left in the regular season for our Blue Tongues, and all 4 of them against the Newcastle Northstars, the Tongues have just one thing on their mind… turn out the lights on the boys from Twinkletown!

Matches between the Northstars and Blue Tongues has always been some of the best hockey to watch, and these last few games shall be no different. The Northstars bring with them a strong offensive lineup and solid netminding from Matt Ezzy (product of Gold Coast Ice Hockey, btw). The Blue Tongues bring size, grit and a strong offensive scoring punch from imports Mike McRae and Dallas Costanzo. This season the Blue Tongues have a new weapon however. One that could play a huge role in these final 4 games; Reese Kalleitner. Reese has been solid in all his games played this season, and looks to continue his domination between the pipes this weekend.

Going into this weekends games, the Northstars have just 8 regulation wins, but have managed to pull off a whopping 7 shootout victories, ensuring their place in the standings with 39 points! The Blue Tongues have 9 wins and 1 shootout victory and currently sit tied for 4th spot with 30 points. While the Stars have put up more goals this season, the goals against for both teams (62 & 66 respectively) are both in the top 3 in the league.

The current standings are:

TEAM	GP	W	L	OTW	OTL	PTS	GF	AVG	GA	AVG	PCT	L10
Newcastle North Stars	18	8	2	7	1	39	85	4.70	62	3.40	0.722	7-1-0-1-0
Melbourne Ice	18	10	5	2	1	35	90	5.00	52	2.90	0.648	4-4-0-0-0
Adelaide Adrenaline	20	6	5	5	4	32	86	4.30	75	3.80	0.533	3-2-0-2-0
Gold Coast Blue Tongues	18	9	7	1	1	30	69	3.80	66	3.70	0.556	4-4-0-1-0
Sydney Bears	19	9	7	0	3	30	55	2.90	77	4.10	0.526	5-4-0-1-0
Canberra Knights	18	5	11	0	2	17	68	3.80	83	4.60	0.315	2-6-0-2-0
Sydney Ice Dogs	19	3	13	0	3	12	55	2.90	93	4.90	0.211	2-7-0-1-0

Adrenaline Champs, Off-Seasons & the AIHL Rumour Mill

Sam — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:17:07 +0000

We’ve reached that part of the season we love to hate. The skates are put away, the schedule is complete and the champion has been crowned; the 2009 AIHL season is over.

Adelaide Adrenaline, AIHL Champions

Congratulations to the Adelaide Adrenaline who played some of the best hockey this fan has seen in recent times, dominating the Melbourne Ice 6-1 in their semi-final and defeating the defending champions, Newcastle North Stars in a 3-2 overtime victory on Sunday to secure the championship.

With IHA declaring the revered Goodall Cup was going back to a state competition, the AIHL introduced a new trophy which AIHL teams will now play for. The trophy was on display during the finals and handed to Adrenaline Greg Oddy as the captain of the victorious Adelaide Adrenaline.

The Gold Coast Blue Tongues made their first ever finals appearance to the roar of a dedicated Tongues fan base. Players later expressed that the Blue Tongues fans, who numbered less than 20 out-screamed the packed North Stars crowd. Keeping even through 2 periods, the Blue Tongues lost to the Newcastle North Stars 5-3 in their semi-final matchup.

The Melbourne Ice team, who were defeated 6-1 by the Adrenaline in semi-final #1 should take away many positive things from this season, one in which saw them rebuilding with youth and inexperience. Greg Oddy and the boys did fantastic to get them to the playoffs.

Brad Smulders, AIHL MVP

Brad Smuldes was awarded the AIHL regular season MVP award. He broke the AIHL scoring record, putting up 33 goals, 43 assists for 76 points, beating the old record by 7 points.

Cass Delsar of the Adelaide Adrenaline was awarded the playoff MVP, for what we can tell, deflecting a puck and scoring the overtime game winner agains the North Stars. This has sparked a discussion as to whether scoring “that” goal is deserving of the playoff MVP. We feel Greg Oddy or Thilthorpe would have been more deserving personally.

Mike Crowhurst of Slapshot.com.au has posted that DVDs of the finals games (all 3 of them) are available for purchase via their website: http://www.slapshot.com.au. According to Mike, they had 300 people tuning in to watch the games! A huge thanks to Mike, Mischa and the rest of the Slapshot boys for making the games available to the world.

The AIHL Trophy

The AIHL off-season is a long one, stretching through til April/May next year. Over the next 7 months teams will work on securing new imports, work on training the local guys and prepare for another AIHL season. The AIHL is notorious for it’s rumour mill, so here are few to whet your appetite.

According to people in the know, the talk around the league is that there could be new teams in the AIHL next season. Nobody has been able to confirm anything as yet, however 3 names keep popping up; Melbourne, Central Coast and Brisbane. Melbourne have their new ice arena next season, making room for another team down there. The Central Coast has the Rhinos, although I find it hard to believe they would be back if the same owner is involved. Brisbane used to have the Blue Tongues, so has the ability and fan base to hold a team.

According to sources who we believe had one too many, Matt Ezzy’s days in Newcastle are over, and he could be on the move to a new team. This rumour was also popular this time last year, so take it as you will. I sincerely hope he does not move to the Gold Coast unless he welcomes the taste of humble pie, as there is zero chance fans up there will worship him as the Newcastle crowd do.

Loads of rumours of returning import players, including 1 from the Blue Tongues, 1 from Newcastle and 1 from the Adrenaline.

Goalies: When is a starter not a starter

Sam — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:10:43 +0000

The AIHL finals last weekend hosted some of the most exciting hockey many fans have seen, not to mention the sellout crowd to see the Gold Coast Blue Tongues make their first ever appearance in the AIHL finals. The Blue Tongues lost to the North Stars, who in turn lost to the 2009 AIHL Champions, the Adelaide Adrenaline in what was fast paced, end-to-end hockey.

The weekend however was not without controversy. Going into the weekend, Blue Tongues fans were aware that the veteran Milan Novysedlak would be starting in net, a move which had fans and opponents alike wondering “WTF?”. It turned out, this sentiment was not had by only Tongues fans.

: Fans feel Milan robbed Fiveash out of his goalie spot

Saturday evening during the first intermission between the Blue Tongues and North Stars I had a number of North Stars fans ask why the Blue Tongues regular season starter, Luke Fiveash, was not in net. We could only shrug of course, because that question is one we’d like to know the answer to also.

It must be said that Milan played a solid game in net on Saturday, and this blog post is not designed to take anything away from him or his game, merely to beg the question as to why he got the nod over Luke Fiveash.

According to the AIHL website, Luke Fiveash played 14 games this season (7W, 6L + 1 game where we lack correct stat data), averaging just 2.97 goals against and putting up an 88.86% save percent. He had the best GAA of all starting netminders (those who played 50% or more of their teams games). His save percent was equal to that of Newcastles Matt Ezzy. Luke also outplayed Matt Ezzy in 2 games earlier this season on the gold coast, only to have the defense let him down resulting in 2 shootout losses.

Compare this to Milan, who played 4 regular season games (3W, 1L), having missed the majority of the season due to a bad injury. His first game back after that injury was a bad 9-3 loss to the Melbourne Ice just 2 weeks ago.

OneNorth Stars fan commented that they were shocked that the Blue Tongues would play Milan when Luke was not only ready to play, but had already proven his ability to take on the North Stars. I had similar comments come from Ice, Ice Dogs, Bears and Adrenaline fans, as well as 2 business owners in the Newcastle region.

Since the game, there are rumours floating around that Milan may be announcing his retirement. Could this be connected to why he started? I don’t know. I feel for Luke. He’s a solid netminder who is a solid team guy, always doing what’s asked of him and never complaining. He helped carry the team to the playoffs, fans would have liked to see him where we believe he belongs; between the pipes.