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The honour of their club was being called into question. Sign 5: Devin Didiomete returned to the Skydome last Sunday in the wake of Mike Danton’s visa refusal, having loudly mocked the team and Danton on Twitter. Sign 4: As injuries mounted, young players brought up from junior and lower levels played (and continue to play) out of their skins, not least Dale White, who last season was playing mainly NIHL hockey and now has earned a regular shift on the Blaze’s third line, scoring his first EIHL goal against Sheffield two weeks ago. If you mess up on this team, you make damn sure you make up for it. And another message was sent loud and clear. Sign 3: In the first home league game against Fife it was new arrival Brad Leeb’s turn to take the initiative, as he returned from a three game suspension for a sucker punch against Sheffield in the away PS game and scored twice, including the winner mere seconds after he’d returned from taking a penalty for the powerplay which gave Fife a late equaliser. We may be outnumbered, but we’ll never let ourselves be outgunned. Sure, a weakened Blaze (already missing d-man Jerramie Domish) lost the home game after winning the away game the night before but the message was already beginning to get through. Sign 2: The first games v Sheffield saw captain Shea Guthrie lay down a marker for his team in two performances that saw him fly round the ice like a bat out of hell, setting the kind of example that doesn’t so much encourage team-mates to follow as challenge their manhood if they choose not to. They were roaring Olson on all the way, stood up on the bench and stepping in to back their team-mate up. Sign 1: In the opening pre-season game Mouth Of The South (Wales) Devin Didiomete met Benn Olson in a scrap that was relatively unremarkable as a fight in itself (Olson won), but notable for the reaction of the rest of the Blaze bench. This Blaze team has found that formula., and the evidence is everywhere, Ladies and gentlemen of UK, hockey…be afraid. It’s not a decision that can be made by one person or even a decision that’s explicitly stated, but it’s shown in the actions of every member of the team, from the first-line forward to the back-office staff.Īnd when it happens, it’s a rare and wonderful alchemy-the kind of thing that can win a team a championship some say they have no right to. It takes a rare group of men (and or women) to do that. Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough. As injuries sting and the hockey gods keep throwing bolts of misfortune, a tingle sweeps through the air as somehow a team decide with a collective will that they’re not going to hide from the storm, but stand up and scream into the wind:Ĭome on then, hockey gods. However, just occasionally, the reverse happens. Seeing an arena react to a team in this situation is often like watching a Gulf Coast town prepare for a hurricane, as the organisation collectively hunkers down and hopes merely to weather the storm without too much damage. There is no worse feeling than seeing a team in a bad-luck streak go a goal down and feeling the wave of discontent sweep the arena and settle over everything like an invisible grey blanket of fear, discontent and, most painfully, resignation. The killing thing, though, is watching a team react when this happens. The music seems a little quieter, people are a little less noisy at the rink, and the warmups seem a little less purposeful. I’ve seen it happen at times over the past few years with the Blaze. You can sense it around a team when you’re involved with them, however peripherally. The excuses keep flowing as people convince themselves that it’s just a blip and we can ride this one out. The whispers of doubt start to rise unbidden in the back of minds-however quickly shushed they might be. In fact, when the injury bug bites or Lady Luck decides to talk to the other guy at the bar counter night after night, most of the time, that has a detrimental effect on the morale around a team or the thoughts within it. The old clichés are trotted out about “ staying strong” and “ taking it one game at a time” in pre-game talk after post-match-interview. Coaches come out with that old excuse “ sometimes you just don’t get the breaks”. We all know what the traditional cycle of events is when a sports team suffers a run of bad luck.įans start to mutter about “curses”.
They say it breeds champions, but funnily enough, no-one, fan or player, ever goes out at the beginning of a hockey season and says “y’know what? I want it tough.