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.

Related posts:

1. Matt Amado interview
2. Weekend Roundup: Ice Dogs Bite & Bears Fall
3. Staring Down The Barrel At The 2011 AIHL Finals

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.

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.

Related posts:

1. Net Games: Ranking BT Goalies
2. Twinkle Twinkle Little Northstars
3. Adrenaline Champs, Off-Seasons & the AIHL Rumour Mill