Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Starting Six - Straight From The NHL

Straight from the NHL



Joaquin Gage

He joined the Ayr Eagles for the 01/02 ISL season. The previous year he had the joy of pulling on the Edmonton Oilers jersey. He arrived in the UK with a huge reputation and wage demand. Proved himself as a top performer


Eric Cairns

Tough guy Cairns iced in over 30 games for the London Racers during the infamous NHL lock-out season. He left his mark on the UK game after trying to knock everyone's head off.


Nick Boynton

Another NHL lockout acquistion. He skated in 19 games for the Nottingham Panthers. He was probably the biggest name and most talented player to play here during the lock-out.


Wade Belak

Belak chose to play for the Coventry Blaze after the NHL and NHLPA failed to reach an agreement. He wanted to play and the UK suited him. He once said the Fife Ice Arena was a hell hole. Ctth agrees.


Scott Nichol

Yet another lock out signing. He played for the London Racers and put up 9+19 in 24 games for the Capital based club. His brother lived in the UK at the time and he thought he would visit him for a winter.


Steve McKenna

The 6'8 D man was a Nottingham Panther for 49 games. He played with Mario Lemieux, he played with Jaromir Jagr, he played with Paul Moran.

WE ARE BACK!

After a crash-crisis and mass time constraints hit us early season our plans to go nation wide with a CttH magazine his the skidz. We put out one glossy, special, amazing, fancy issue and that was that. Deal done, no more CttH. Oh how sad we were. Well some of us were, others partied like it was 1999. Anyway, I have a little bit of time on my hands now and I thought I would kick start some life back into the old CttH blog of grandness. I will try my best to keep up the very low, ill-informed and petty standards you expect from us. So lets get straight on with it:


Secret Life Of Jonathon Phillips - Sheffield Steelers

Did you know:

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Monday, 21 April 2008

Jaroslav Prosvic Photo Of The Day


#80 Jaroslav Prošvic doing his shizzle (watching) for HC Caen
Stats: 25 4+5 9pts

Saturday, 19 April 2008

My Teams 2007/08 Part I

So all the major Euro hockey nations seasons are now over, all the champions have been crowned and a long summer without hockey is about to begin, so how did my teams get on this year:

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

Viktor Hubl Photo Of The Day


Viktor Hübl shoots, Viktor Hübl scores!.... Viktor Hübl photo of the day

Slavia Celebrate In Style


Monday, 14 April 2008

Andrej Rajcak Update

Andrej Rajcak looks to have had a decent enough season over in Denmark with TotempoHvIK.

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!

Ladies, gentlemen.

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

We have decided to put together a mini play-off finals special edition of Check To The Head.
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

Monday, 24 March 2008

HV-71 Fans In Falkirk

Pre last game of the regular EIHL season I was questioned on more than one occasion about my choice of hockey jersey. My mates insisted that I should have been wearing a Capitals top and that my choice of HV-71 was down right wrong for such a game.


But on my way home from the Caps victory over the Bison yesterday I was forced to depart the train at Falkirk Grahamston station due to "essential" work being carried out further down the line. So off I got with my brother and crossed over to the car park where I was being picked up to get a lift home. As I was waiting about on my parents arriving in their car I noticed a young couple staring in our direction and obviously talking about us. About five minutes later they came over to us and questioned my HV-71 jersey. It turned out they were Swedish exchange students over in Scotland studying but were from originally from Jönköping which just happens to be the home of HV-71. They said they couldn't believe their eyes when they saw me randomly walk past in what to them is an obscure Scottish town in the middle of no-where wearing the hockey jersey of their home town team. They had to come over and find out why I was there, so I stood talking to them for a little while explaining how I had been in Sweden and Jönköping earlier this year and that I had bought my top at the Kinnarps Arena just before I saw HV-71 beat Frolunda. They were so shocked about it all but that might have been down to them discovering that their was a hockey league in the UK.

So let that story be an inspiration to you all. You should wear your hockey tops all the time no matter where you go because you just don't know who you might just meet out on your travels.