The brave shouts of defiance from Nottingham Panthers, Belfast Giants and Coventry Blaze are fading away in the Elite League as Sheffield Steelers disappear over the horizon with a virtually insurmountable 11-point lead.

With the top four separated from the pack by an even more gaping 19 points and the pitiful Basingstoke Bison going under for the third time with ten points less than their nearest rivals, I think we can fairly say that the league's experiment with a two-tier import structure has not been quite the roaring success they hoped for.

The story in the Challenge Cup race is little different. In Sunday's semi, Manchester Phoenix hammered the Bison 6-1 to reach the Challenge Cup final by an eye-watering 11-3 aggregate. This was a day after Tony Hand's side had edged the Stingrays 4-3 in Hull for a decisive 8-3 two-leg margin. And the Phoenix are only a mid-table team.

Contrast this with the English Premier League's tightest race in years. At the weekend runners-up Guildford Flames beat the league-leading Phantoms in Peterborough 4-2 to regain first place. MK Lightning won both their road games to stay in touch with the top two and fifth-place Bracknell Bees refused to be ruled out after also coming up with a pair of wins.

At the other end, Romford Raiders continue to be the form team with yet another four-point weekend and, after spending most of the season at or near the bottom of the pile, have lifted themselves into seventh, good enough for a play-off spot if the league ended today.

You can find all the league and cup standings here.

What did I say last week about the tough getting going? In the Elite's big weekend game Rob Dowd, 20, scored the winner for his Steelers at home to their great enemy, the Panthers. In the last minute? No. In OT? No. It was on Steelers' ninth attempt in the shootout. See it here.

These local rivalries rarely go off without some controversy and this one was no exception. Around the halfway mark Panthers' high scoring Dan Tessier was allegedly kneed by Steelers' defenceman Scott Basiuk. The resulting injury has put him out of the line-up for at least a week and Panthers, already suffering from a shortage of bodies, have sent the match video to the league accompanied by a letter from their mum, sorry, an official complaint about the incident.

I doubt it improved the Panthers' temper that this was their second loss in two nights in a shootout.

Then there's the Cardiff Devils. The Welsh side are a disappointing sixth in the Elite standings and worse, they stumbled 4-7 at eighth-placed Edinburgh Capitals on Sunday. Still, it was their third away game in four nights with the first of two in Newcastle going into a shootout which Vipers won - through Ed Courtenay who at 41 is probably the league's oldest player.

For lovers of home-grown talent, there was one bright note in this contest. When Devils' Canadian netminder Peter Aubry became ill, his place was taken by one of Cardiff's own, Joe Myers, 22. Player-coach Gerad Adams told the local Echo: “Peter took a knock to the head against Newcastle on Saturday and wasn’t feeling the best. We decided not to take any risks and sent on Joe Myers, who had a tremendous match. And Aubs will be fine."

Translation - Phew! I don't have to rely on a Brit in goal again. No offence to Gerad here. He's paid to win games. It's not his fault that youth development continues to be a black mark on this sport.

The EPL's big match was the clash of the top two - Guildford Flames at Peterborough Phantoms. Like the one in Sheffield this was a thriller with the score tied at 2-2 until the 47th minute when Steve Lee scored on the powerplay. Ollie Bronnimann iced the game for the visitors at 56.04.

But ... you could have fitted the entire crowd into a couple of blocks in Sheffield Arena. While the Steelers-Panthers attracted around 6,500 passionate followers, there were barely 500 of the Peterborough faithful, even though the club had offered seats at £5 to the local football club.

It's a small consolation for the league that the return match on Saturday should attract around 2,000 to Guildford's Spectrum. I'll be there to report for you.

Quick note - the Great Senior One, Steve Moria, scored the winner for Slough Jets in their 3-2 defeat of the Flames the next night. 'Mo' was on his first weekend back following injury.

Finally, the World Championships. With talk of at least one dual national goalie being in the frame for GB as well as Sheffield Steelers' home-grown hopeful, Rob Dowd, this year's games in Torun, Poland should be well worth attending.

GB will play five times between 11 and 17 April in Torun, an attractive town - according to this website - about 80 miles (125 km) north-west of Warsaw, the Polish capital.

The GB Supporters Club are excellent organisers of travel, accommodation and match tickets as well as amusements on site, so check out their website at www.gbsc.co.uk. Annette, the boss, tells me rooms are still available in a good hotel.

Our team has yet to be announced but details of the competition are here.
 

For the first time since Christmas, I went to Basingstoke on Saturday. There's some great hockey fans there, guys I've known for years and it was good to see them again. But I must admit my main reason for going was to watch the visiting Steelers, especially Robert Dowd, 20, one of our most promising forwards.
 
The GB senior prospect had scored 19 goals so far this season, his first full one with the Steelers, and the travelling fans were no doubt expecting the Next One would hit the 20-mark against the bottom-of-the-table Bison.

That was too easy for a fellow with such a talent. He preferred to wait 24 hours and score his score against the much stronger Belfast Giants. What is it they say? When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

His coach, Dave Matsos, was delighted for him [link].

Back in Bison-land my buddies told me the club urgently needs a general manager. Player-coach Eric Braff and goalie Kevin Reiter are finding it hard to cope with the paperwork while being away at Winchester University a couple of days a week where they're taking a business degree.

Reiter, by the way, was voted man of the match on Saturday despite letting in six goals. Methinks he received this as much for his loyalty to his struggling team-mates as for his sterling efforts at keeping the Steelers from scoring more than six times (on 46 shots).

The American agreed to come back early from his injury (a high ankle sprain) because the Bison claimed they were unable to find a replacement for him at the weekend.

Good for him, but I wonder how Graham Bird, his back-up, felt about this. The Stockport native still hasn't played a single Bison game. Surely, this was the ideal time to ice him, unless he's injured. After all, Bison had nothing to lose as they were never going to beat the Steelers.

I understand the club haven't ruled out continuing in the Elite League despite some pessimistic comments before Christmas from Harry Robinson, their director of hockey. But it's obvious that they need someone to run the show as well as being comfortable with their budget. The admin load for all Elite League teams is likely to be heavier next season because the entry rules for imports are being tightened [link].

Basingstoke's crowds remain a problem. The town was hit by a blizzard - what the Met Office now likes to call 'a snow event' - the day before the Steelers' game. The treachorous road conditions kept the numbers down to around 600-700. The travelling fans numbered barely 50.

At the end of the season, Planet Ice are going to have to take a big decision - Elite or EPL? I reckon it's a no-brainer, especially with all those local rivalries beckoning in the English Premier League.

I had an email from Ice Hockey UK the other day. Now there's a novelty.

They told me that the third-tier Northern League might add a couple of English National League teams next season. (To be strict, the press release wasn't quite that clear but that's how EIHA chairman, Ken Taggart, explained it to me.)

There was also a comment about a report in a Scottish newspaper which left me with the impression that our governing body still has a lot of work to do in keeping the press informed about its decision making processes.

Apart from some optimistic remarks about ice hockey's garden looking lovely for the time of year, that was it. Hardly earth-shattering news requiring a public statement, I would have thought.
 
It would have been more enlightening to read why IHUK do not believe that a complete overhaul of the sport's structure is urgently required.

If you're interested, the full text of Ice Hockey UK's statement is here and the newspaper report (by one of the sport's most experienced journalists) is here.

Georges Laraque - NHL's top fighter speaks out against fighting!
 
My hatred of staged fighting has found the most unlikely ally. Since the tragic death of player Don Sanderson in a Canadian amateur game, everyone across the Atlantic has been having their say on the role of fighting in ice hockey. But no one's opinion has been listened to more than that of Montreal Canadiens forward Georges Laraque, the NHL's heavyweight champion of hockey fights.
 
Believe it or not, Big George is trying to find ways of reducing, if not eliminating the rough stuff even though, as he admitted, it could put him out of a job. ''I want to protect and help the young players of the future,'' he said.
 
I couldn't find a transcript of his actual remarks - I caught them on ESPN America - but here's some comments on his comments from the other side of the water [link].

To comment on this blog, please email me on stewice@aol.com and I'll post them on our website.
 

We’ve all heard the horror stories about clubs leaking enormous amounts of dosh. How Planet Ice have admitted that Basingstoke Bison will lose £150,000 this year [link], while Scotty Neil has declared that Edinburgh Capitals' finances are in a tricky state [link].

Now we have Peterborough Phantoms worried about the low turnout at their games [link].

And my sources have told me that Belfast Giants lost oodles last season and are slashing costs mercilessly in fear of their biggest backer dropping out. And he's a Texas oil tycoon!

Last week I identified travel and imports as being the biggest items on most clubs’ budgets. Merging the top two leagues in either a regionalised or a divisional system would save on travel, but finding the right level of imports to suit a majority of clubs is a much knottier problem.

But the rewards of doing this, I believe, would be well worth the blood spilled in a few meeting rooms. Then perhaps the endless in-fighting among our administrators would lessen and leave them able to concentrate on the essentials - our national teams and junior development.

I can dream, can’t I?!

Here’s some other thoughts to encourage them to take these bold steps, though the recession might just be enough to force them into action.

First, let’s lay the old ghost that a lower standard of play puts off the fans. There’s plenty of examples that point in the opposite direction. (The information has been compiled from back editions of The Ice Hockey Annual, copies available here)

Basingstoke. Their crowds have gone down over the years, regardless of the standard of the league they've been in. Average crowd in 1991-92 - 1,500 in Div One (equivalent to EPL); 1999-00 - 1,300 in BNL; last season - about 700 in the Elite.

Belfast. Believed to have lost a six-figure sum last year, despite returning the Elite's third highest attendance.

Hull. A fourth place finish in the Heineken Premier Div. in 1991-92 helped the then Humberside Seahawks to attract 1,600 fans a game. This tumbled to 1,000 in the BNL in 1999-00, after a string of dodgy owners put the mockers on the team. Currently, the Stingrays are struggling to draw 750 in the Elite, despite at last acquiring responsible ownership.

Newcastle. Played in Superleague, the BNL and the Elite and have always had dismal crowds in their cavernous but non-atmospheric 5,500-seat arena.

Nottingham. Panthers' fortunes have been entirely the opposite of the Vipers. Played in all the top leagues since 1980 and have always enjoyed high, often capacity attendances. Blessed with Britain's most fervent following whatever standard the Panthers play.

Sheffield. Their crowds have steadily dropped since their debut season, 1991-92, when they drew crowds of up to 10,000 in the third level of the sport. They held on to the fans in Superleague but were down to an average of 3,700 in the Elite last year.

Peterborough. Top of the EPL but failing to attract many fans. The crowds were at their peak in the mid-Eighties when around 1,400 fans turned up every week to watch their star player, Garry Unger, a genuine 24-carat NHLer. Today the new Phantoms play a much better standard of hockey but they're struggling to bring in 500. The only exception - of course - was when they recently played local rivals, MK Lightning, and doubled their usual attendance.

The lessons here are nothing to do with the standard of play. They’re much more to do with bad owners and good sponsors, arenas too big and expensive or marketing too small. And local rivalries, of course.

Lesson One - Ice Hockey UK should strictly vet club owners. This may be idealistic but it's vital because nothing puts people off a sport more than a collapsed club. Bad debts can affect a whole town and damage the team's and the sport's image.

Lesson Two - As soon as the economy eases, find a high profile sponsor. The standard of the game was far lower in the Eighties than now but being associated with household names like Heineken and Benson & Hedges gave ice hockey the glamour which helped to sell the game nationally - especially as they also paid for the costs of televising games.

Finally, don't panic. Rinks need ice hockey. They don't much care at what level as long as whoever is in charge pays their bills. (I'm excluding rink-owned clubs here, of course). In this respect, I believe they're no different from true ice hockey fans.

Views on the News

‘Import’ goalies on the GB's men's team. Say it ain’t so, Thommo! The story goes that Sheffield's Jody Lehman and Cardiff's Peter Aubry are keen to play for GB and are going to get their passports shortly. Surely netminding is the least of GB's worries. Persuading the clubs to release their players for a weekend or two to play some serious warm-up games would achieve far more.
 

Did you smile when you read Steve Clarke's editorial in this week's Powerplay? [link] That's the one where he totally changed his view of what ice hockey teams should do to survive the recession.

After pushing for fewer imports and urging the leading clubs to try a two-division league to cut travel costs, this week he admitted that some clubs had protested that reducing imports would lower the standard of play and turn off their fans while not necessarily saving them money.

I'm not criticising anyone here, least of all Steve whom I don't envy having to write a sensible thought piece every week. Anyway, I think it proves just how difficult this game is to organise. Every club would like to have fewer imports but producing their own players is a painfully slow process.

The development of good young home-grown players is a skill which ice hockey's administrators are no better at than their counterparts in other team sports. In their defence, our society (the EU, schools, the law) does little to encourage them.

Travel costs obviously depend very much on where a team is based and the size of its budget.
As for having two divisions, the biggest sticking point is that it takes at least eight teams to form a competitive division, and getting eight teams to agree on anything in ice hockey must be the most difficult problem of all!

I did find it encouraging that my own editorial in the current Annual said much the same as Steve did in his first piece. We're agreed that cutting costs is essential for the game to survive at a respectable level in these difficult times. And like it or not, imports and travel are the largest items in most teams' budgets.

Over to you, guys.

Talking of having different views on a subject, what do you think of Sky's coverage of the Elite League? Personally, I think this is as good as we've had over the past 25 years. We see the whole game, there's plenty of interviews, a round-up of the other mathces, analysis of the league and the game. And Dave Simms and Nick Rothwell are as good as, if not better than Richard Boprey and Paul Ferguson, Sky's previous duo.

The camera-work is a bit patchy and a couple more cameras wouldn't go amiss so we could actually see goals being scored. But extra cameras would push up the costs and the camera-work can only be as good as the venues. While our arenas are as TV-friendly as most in Europe, many of our rinks appear to have been designed by ten-year-olds.

But what really concerns me is what value the Elite League is getting for their money. Don't forget, the clubs themselves are paying for the telecasts. And how much does the sport as a whole benefit from being on TV?

The answer here, I fear, is not much. Portraying British ice hockey as being played mostly by foreigners is not helpful. And a minority sport on a pay-TV channel only appeals to the hardcore fan. Sky, or rather the producers, Televideo, are shy about revealing the actual viewing figures.

Unless the televised games are bringing in new sponsors and fans, there has to be a question-mark over their usefulness. So enjoy the Sky games while you can. It seems unlikely that this expense can survive the credit crunch.

To finish, I'll climb on my old hobby-horse, goon hockey. After the tragic death of a player during a fight in a Canadian amateur league, (latest news here) my dislike of staged fighting is even more pronounced.

So I was disappointed, though not surprised, when Belfast Giants signed enforcer Jason Rushton. In the light of the tragedy (remember ice hockey is a small world) it seemed especially tasteless when he reportedly arranged two fights in his first two games with Basingstoke's tough guy, Jeremy Cornish. [link]

I can understand (just) that a hard man like Rushton should be in the Giants' line-up to stop the opposition taking liberties with their skilled players. (One of their most skilful, Thornton, himself had a run-in with Andre Payette earlier in the season and came off worst with a ban.) But arranging fights between two willing combatants has nothing to do with playing ice hockey.

The league will no doubt plead that desperate times like a recession require desperate measures to bring the punters in. So those tempted to dismiss me as a wimpy Englishman may be surprised to learn that many Canadians are coming round to my way of thinking, according to this article

Enjoy your ice hockey, folks, and let's get rid of the brawling!
 

Sheffield Steelers last night extended their lead at the top of the Elite League to nine points with their 2-1 defeat of the Giants in Belfast. Report here

Who's going to stop them winning their first league title for five years? Runners-up Nottingham Panthers are in the best position but after their weekend collapse to Hull Stingrays - yes, Hull Stingrays - I wouldn't risk a wager on them. After a result like that it must have come as a mighty relief to Panthers' player-coach, Corey Neilson, to have his coaching contract extended for at least one more season. [link]

His boss, Neil Black, sounded happy when he announced it, too. "I'm thrilled that Corey's staying with us. It's a tough job but he has shown his capabilities and he will get better and better."

Mr Black is showing unexpected patience. He is known to be desperate for Panthers to win their first league championship since 1956. A year ago, he sacked Neilson's predecessor, Mike Ellis, for his failure to bring the Monteith Bowl to the NIC.

Another coach winning raves from his owner is Romford's Jesse Hammill. He's now led the struggling Romford Raiders to an unprecedented four victories in a row. The string included EPL giants, Guildford Flames, who were killed 4-3 in their own barn on Saturday. Report here

What the heck's going on in the so-called British Knockout Cup? When Belfast beat Coventry 10-3 (over two legs) in the semi-final, their player-coach Steve Thornton started talking about a Grand Slam - or at least his local paper did [link]

OK, we can't blame Stevie for being upbeat as the Giants are in the Challenge Cup semis and aren't quite out of the running for the Elite title. But the KO Cup is only of interest to those still in it, whoever they are.

The league has never told us how the cup is organised, the finals are usually played mid-week during the run-up to the playoffs, and this semi was staged with two of the quarter-finals still to be played/finished.

What a mess. As far as this column is concerned, it remains the British Washout Cup.

Edinburgh Capitals' owner Scott Neil has taken control of the Scottish National League's Pirates who play in Paisley's splendid 4,000-seat Braehead Arena. This sounds like good news but as you can see here, the building hosts a multitude of events and the Pirates and their fans are constantly frustrated by 'movable' game days.

According to the Edinburgh club [link] the intention is 'cross-promotion' of the two teams. But it's hard to see how effective this might be when the pair attract less than a thousand fans between them.

Good wishes, by the way, to our ex-Dundee Stars' friend Allen Paul for his speedy return to full health.

Twenty of our finest young players are in northern Spain this week, playing in the World under-20 Championships. (Details here).

This is the same age group which was won by Canada just after Christmas, in front of 20,000-odd hockey fanatics in Ottawa. (The Canada-USA game was reckoned to be one of the best junior games ever played. (Highlights here).

While the GB Supporters Club [link] will, as usual, be represented in Logrono, our lads will be chuffed if 200 turn up to watch them play against the cream of the crop from Croatia, the Netherlands, China, Mexico (yes, really) and hosts Spain. The games are in the equivalent of the third division.

Apart from a couple of lads from Edinburgh and four from Sheffield Scimitars (and one from an American club www.texasrenegades.net) the team has been drawn from Nottingham and clubs south. This shows where the strength of our game lies these days.

Head coach Peter Russell (formerly of Swindon Wildcats) and his assistant, Roger Hunt, a Canadian based for years in Dundee, are vastly experienced at this level. This is the sixth straight year that they've been on the coaching team, during which time the under-20s have bounced around between Divisions I and II. In the last five tournaments they've finished top of DII twice and bottom of DI twice. Dizzying.

This time round GB look likely to end up with silver or bronze. The matter looks likely to be decided on Thursday afternoon when they play their final decisive game against the Dutch.

Unfortunately, the Brits missed out on gold by losing their very first game, 3-2 against the favoured Croatia, who seem certain to win every one of their five contests. Once again, one of our national sides will miss out on promotion by just a goal or two. If only our fans were as passionate about their best kids as the Canadians are about theirs.

The Croatian game was mighty close with the shots on goal virtually even, ditto the penalties. GB's keeper is Peterborough's Euan King (who stood in the Basingstoke net for a couple of recent Elite League games) and his save percentage is currently a respectable 92.86.

Another if only... If only Euan could have played a few more Elite games. As Hull's coach Rick Strachan pointed out the other day during the Sky game - the only difference between import goalies and British ones is the number of games they play at the top level. Dream on, eh?

As for the penalties, there was little to choose between the 'special teams'. The Croats had one powerplay goal and one shorthanded while both GB's came with the man advantage. Trouble was, we didn't score until the final session when our opponents were already three up.

Ryan Watt of the Bison - one of eight Elite League players on the squad - was selected as man of the match. He and prolific Scot Iain Bowie (12 goals in last year's under-18s) scored GB's goals, Bowie getting GB's second in the dying stages.

Britain's next three games were walkovers. The Spanish were sunk 6-0, GB danced around the Mexicans 7-1 and the last place Chinese were eaten up 9-2.

Never mind, there's always next year and from what I hear, our teenagers are improving all the time.