Monday, 21 April 2008
Saturday, 19 April 2008
My Teams 2007/08 Part I
Pardubice: - The less said the better I think. After winning the pre-season Tipsport cup the 2007/08 Czech Extraliga season turned out to be a complete nightmare for the team and the fans. The season started off with the shock death of D man Martin Cech, who passed away after losing control of his car on a journey home. Pardubice also had to start the campaign with 12 road games as the Cez Arena was being renovated. The team couldn't recover from either early season blow. That wasn't the only troubles at the club. Several of the new signings mostly on the defence failed to perform leaving Janko Lasak hanging out dry more times than not. The team just couldn't string together a winning streak and in the end they finished in 12th spot and missed out on the playoffs. The team had to compete in the very silly play-down series. I hope the powers at be ditch that idea, anyway the club survived that to put an end to a season that everyone involved with the club would like to quickly forget.
12.HC Moeller Pardubice 52 147:157 70pts
MHC Martín: - The complete opposite of Pardubice. 2007/08 was an extremely successful and break out season for MHC in Slovakia. They were extremely competitive on the ice with arguably their strongest ever roster being assembled. Captain Michal Beran led from the front with Jaro Torok and with the best netminder combination of Vlasta Lakosil and Michal Dzubina keeping out the pucks they went on to finish the regular season in 3rd place. The clubs highest ever finish to a regular season. Only a last day defeat cost them the 2nd spot. Finishing there would have secured MHC a spot in next seasons new look European Cup. In the first round of the play-offs MHC faced off against Dukla Trencin. MHC raced to a 3-0 series lead and at one point were 4-1 up in game 4. Everything looked good and the semi-finals were waiting. Dukla and especially netminder Vlad Kovac had other ideas. Trencin took game 4 and went on to win the series. MHC crashed and burned in their remaining playoff games and it took a little bit of the shine away from the excellent season long performance.
3. MHC Martin 54 169:123 102pts
Friday, 18 April 2008
Monday, 14 April 2008
Andrej Rajcak Update
Stats: 45 21+ 35 56
His club sat in 5th place exactly mid table for most of the season but a slump in form towards the end of the regular campaign saw them slip down to finish in the 7th spot. It meant they would face off against one of the strongest if not the best team in Denmark 'Herning BlueFoxes' in the 1st round of the playoffs. Going with what I have read HvIK defied the odds a bit and despite being thumped 10-1 in the play-off opener they were actually leading the series at one point 3-1. But a big come back from the BlueFoxes forced the series to seven games. HvIK lost the decider 7-2 but after the match HvIK's head coached wasn't happy and complained that ref had sucked big time and that had cost his team the game. Andrej Rajcak also dropped the gloves for a scuffle in the decider. Herning actually went on to win the Championship with a 4-1 win in the final series.
Rajcaks's points total was 8th highest in the league. Just 3 points more though would have seen him rise to 3rd in the charts. His 21 goals led the team, he finished the year just 1 point behind Ondrej Steiner in over-all scoring for HvIK....
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
Playoff Edition - FREE DOWNLOAD!
For those of you who were not able to attend the EIHL playoff weekend, please find a link below to our special Playoff Edition of Check to the Head that we very kindly handed out gratis to those who were able to attend.
Check to the Head Playoff Edition (2MB)
We have already begun work for next season so check back for news over the summer.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
CTTH - Playoff Edition
The 12 page version of the fanzine will have more of an EIHL flavour to it making it more suitable to all the fans at the finals weekend. The CTTH team also decided we would give it away free to any fans that pass us by outside the NIC or that we see in the pub over the two days.
Their will also be a one off article written by a special guest editor making it a real collectors edition and of course we will have an extremely special version of Murray Manson referee phd.
So look out for it over the weekend!..... Enjoy :D