The British Hockey Thread 2015-2016

[rmt_1982]

Don't know who that estate agent in Birmingham is

Hes greatly misunderstood.

[Calv]

Interesting weekend so far. Steelers beat Giants yesterday and today after Giants had won 7 of their last 8 and had started to look like title contenders. Sheffield are charging up the table and are also title contenders. Devils beat Panthers, who are struggling for form at the minute and have fallen down to 5th in the table. Devils had been in a poor spell at home so thats a good win for them.

Clan win, taking them up to 4th and they're also looking good for the title, especially with the conference system. They only have 5 more games against Erhardt teams this season but still another 17 against Gardiner teams.

At the bottom of the table, a short benched Storm take a good victory over Flyers. I watched on the webcast and Storm looked the stronger team throughout. Unfortunately for them Blaze beat Capitals in OT which was the worst possible outcome! Storm stay bottom, 1 point behind Capitals and 5 behind Blaze.

Bison looking good in the EPL, Baston has 6 shotouts in 11 games and hasn't conceded in 204 minutes! (I was there to witness the last goal he conceded). Phantoms holding on to the Bison, as are Lightning but they've played a few extra games. Flames lack consistency, as do Wildcats and Tigers.

At the bottom, Bees lose again, and Phoenix apparently played very poorly.

I'm up in Manchester this coming week with work, so I'm heading up tomorrow and going to the Storm game

[MWE]

Two good wins for the Steelers this weekend still hard to choose who is going to win the title though.

[ForNever]

Finnish goaltender Richard Ullberg signed an end-of-the-season contract with the Guilford Flames. Now I don't know much about British hockey, other than that I had a great game save with the Flames in EHM07 once, but I do know a bit about this goalie. Basically, what Guilford's up is a well-mixed bag.

Ullberg was a promising goalie when he was under 19 years old: he played in several tournaments with Finland National Team U16, U17, U18 and U20, lastly being the 3rd goalie for Team Finland in WJC-20 in the 2011-12 season though he didn't dress for any games. That year he had a great season for such a young goalie in my favourite team SaiPa, playing 23 games with the save percentage of 90,1 and a 2,36 goals against average. His promise didn't last though and in the 2012-13 season he failed to show any development whatsoever. It looked more like that he had weakened from his former self as he couldn't catch anything anymore for SaiPa. Thus, he was sent to the USHL's Green Bay Gamblers to play the rest of the season and SaiPa didn't offer him a new contract after the season. He was later accused of lacking training enthusiasm which could've been one of the reasons behind his downgrade.

After this Ullberg treavelled to Austria in the 2013-14 season with a try-out contract to find a spot to play but to no avail. Later the season he found himself in Mestis (Fin-2), playing for the HCK, dressing for 20 games. Coming up to last season he couldn't find himself a team in Mestis and was thus forced to find a spot in Suomi-sarja (Fin-3), which he did, again dressing for 20 games total in Hermes and FPS. After the season he signed a new contract with Hermes for the 2015-16 season but before he would play any league games for the team he was released and here's the interesting part: he was fired for social media behaviour which was in conflict with the team. As far as I know (I could be wrong on this one), he posted something about illegal drugs, and the way he put it inclined that he was ''pro cannabis'' which with the team couldn't agree.

That wasn't the only post that aggrovated Hermes into releasing Ullberg since the goalie has also delivered other controversial social media posts. This happened to such great extent that Hermes sent Ullberg to a medical examination (dealing with the usage of drugs I guess) and to ''other examinations'' as well (probably mental). Hermes stated and underlined though that Ullberg did in no ways whatsoever neglect training with the team and that there were no problems with him and the team on the sports side.

So yeah, to put it bluntly, Guilford now has a goalie that is infamous for his not-so-laid-back personality and who has even sportswise gone downhill during the last seasons, after such promising junior years. Inside rumours go as far as to say that Ullberg was a cleptomaniac who used to steal money and other belongings from his team mates back when he was playing in HIFK A-juniors. There's a news article about this that can be read here (in Finnish) which shows that there's more to this than rumours. Even though the article doesn't bring up a name, Ullberg's name was mentioned on several occasions on Finnish hockey forums.

[Calv]

Interesting post, thanks

Would you mind if I shared this on another forum?

[Tasku]

Yeah, interesting read, ForNever, thanks. Hadn't even heard of that one. Such great personalities in the world of hockey. And by "great" I don't necessearily mean "good", I mean great, as in entertaining.

[ForNever]

Interesting post, thanks

Would you mind if I shared this on another forum?

No, not at all, go ahead.

[MWE]

EIHL top scorer Ryan Hayes has joined the Steelers this week.

[Calv]

Caps falling apart mid way through the season, as Rutherford leaves for the Giants

[MWE]

No money?

[marksbros6]

Ullberg didn't look too bad in MK, some good reflexes and an amazing double-stop to keep the score down in the 3rd when we were really pushing to extend the lead.

Hard to tell over 2 games but I'd definitely say he needs 'seasoning' in this league. Looked a bit 'flappy' at time and gave up a few rebounds but it's early days yet.

He's certainly a bit of a 'unit' in goal anyway.

[Calv]

Wil hopefully take a look at him in action this weekend

[Calv]

Ullberg didn't look too bad in MK, some good reflexes and an amazing double-stop to keep the score down in the 3rd when we were really pushing to extend the lead.

Hard to tell over 2 games but I'd definitely say he needs 'seasoning' in this league. Looked a bit 'flappy' at time and gave up a few rebounds but it's early days yet.

He's certainly a bit of a 'unit' in goal anyway.

He let in a soft one this evening, but made a great post to post save later on so redeemed himself! He didn't see a huge amount of action so difficult to say much else.

Odd game this evening between Flames and Phoenix, Flames started poorly and Phoenix took advantage with a couple of goals. From the second onwards, it seemed like there was only going to be one winner as Flames had the majority of the chances, but they lacked the finishing to really kill the game off. When they took the 3-2 lead I was expecting that to be it but Phoenix had 1 final attack and scored with less than a minute left, off a nice tip by Satek. In OT, the Flames looked like they had a couple of set plays and Phoenix couldn't contain them. The first led to a breakaway that Forest saved, but Lundin scored off the second

[MWE]

Steelers have beaten Cardiff tonight to stay second and move to 4 points behind leaders Cardiff with two games in hand

[Calv]

Nice save! : https://twitter.com/NPanthersBanter/sta ... 9496949760

[Calv]

Invicta starting this evenings game with no netminder, King has equipment problems and there's no backup dressed! Somehow they've only conceded 2 so far

[Tasku]

Invicta starting this evenings game with no netminder, King has equipment problems and there's no backup dressed! Somehow they've only conceded 2 so far

Are you serious? Are they playing the whole game with 6 skaters?

[Calv]

Invicta starting this evenings game with no netminder, King has equipment problems and there's no backup dressed! Somehow they've only conceded 2 so far

Are you serious? Are they playing the whole game with 6 skaters?

I'm not sure how long it lasted for, I think the equipment problems were fixed after the first period. Remarkable they only let in 2 goals!!

Edit: turns out his equipment turned up after 18 and a half minutes. Sounds as though there was some goal line saves by the outskaters

[Tasku]

That's just unheard of. I've heard of an outskater used as a goalie, but he actually wore the equipment for it. But, I guess if there's no equipment, there's not much to do. Strange things happening in your part of the hockey world.

[Calv]

That's just unheard of. I've heard of an outskater used as a goalie, but he actually wore the equipment for it. But, I guess if there's no equipment, there's not much to do. Strange things happening in your part of the hockey world.

We do things differently over here Apparently, the opposition had 2 dressed netminders but wouldn't let the other team borrow one set of equipment

(This is 3rd tier UK hockey, so players probably are getting £50/100 a week and some are probably getting only expenses or in some cases paying to play)

[Calv]

In other news, Riley Emmerson of the Edinburgh Capitals played half a game last night with a broken arm (ouch! https://twitter.com/jennemmerson22/stat ... 8500081664) and their netminder saved 64 of 66 shots this evening (they lost 2-1 against league leaders Cardiff)

[archibalduk]

That's just unheard of. I've heard of an outskater used as a goalie, but he actually wore the equipment for it. But, I guess if there's no equipment, there's not much to do. Strange things happening in your part of the hockey world.

Funnily enough, the same team Calv is referring to had to do that very same thing 2 or 3 years back. I can't remember which skater it was, but he did a pretty decent job IIRC. In fact, this might also have been against Milton Keynes (but I might be mistaken).

[Calv]

My local team, in the same league, had money issues a few years ago and a lot of players left and they didn't make any signings. They basically had 1 and a half lines, so they dressed their back up netminder as an outskater. The guy was such a bad skater it was hilarious watching him try to keep up with the play Think he later ended up in an off the ice punch up at a match and hasn't played again since (he wasn't a very good netminder either!)

[Tasku]

Hah! Well, as it is amateur hockey, I guess it's not that serious. At the same time, being just an amateur game, you would've thought the other team could've spared some of their equipment.

[Calv]

Hah! Well, as it is amateur hockey, I guess it's not that serious. At the same time, being just an amateur game, you would've thought the other team could've spared some of their equipment.

The netminder without the equipment had been signed/'poached' mid season from the opposition, so this might have influenced their decision not to lend any equipment

For amateur hockey, it's pretty competitive