The talk before this weekends games from the Steelers camp was all about the how the so called 'biggest rivalry' in sport had lost its edge. To be honest, I agreed with the comments by Lefevbre, the games had lost that spark, that nastiness and that games against the Blaze or Giants were more highly anticipated.
I didn't see the game in Sheffield on Saturday night, however I was a keen spectator this evening as the game dished out all the nastiness it needed. However after reading some of the comments on the forums and on twitter, it got me wondering whether I was watching the same game as everyone else!!
Usually I will try and blame any missed events in conversations between friends on my two year old boy and having to attend to his every whim, however this afternoon he managed to sleep for the first 30 minutes of play (don't ask me how with all that noise!) and that meant I could concentrate fully on the action unfolding.
Firstly was the Henley incident. It came as no surprise to me at the time he was thrown out. From where I was sat Spencer was no willing participant in that fight. He may of thrown a jab at Henley but there was no dropping of gloves by Spencer and Henley fell for the bait given to him. I am not condoning the fact that Spencer may well have been overstating the situation for staying down on the ice too long, but Henley gave Spencer a battering that many Panthers fans would have enjoyed but in reality was misplaced and could have cost the Panthers 2 points.
Twitter was full of praise for Henley, I understand why, even if these games don't have the physical edge they once did, emotions will have been running high as it was a niggly game and people will have enjoyed watching Spencer getting a beating, but for me I would have preferred to see Henley give him a beating in a fair fight with the gloves being dropped from the following face off.
Even though we scored a short handed goal to take the lead, Steelers were the better team and Hewitt was doing a fantastic job of winding our players up. We seem to have a problem with this, as we did last week in Fife when Fulton did a brilliant job of winding Stevie Lee up. I look at the make up of our team and we seem to go from one extreme to another. We have the hard guys such as Henley and Salters and possibly Makela who can throw a punch and then the rest of our team is made up of more finesse players. We miss a Matty Myers type of player, or at least we did until the third period.
I am going to very quickly overlook the second period, because we were awful. Passes were sloppy and we seemed to have gone into namby pamby mode in terms of aggression, the complete opposite from the previous period. Steelers deserved their equaliser and after Makela was also thrown from the game, many Panthers fans must have wondered what was in store for the final 20 minutes.
To coin a phrase, cometh the hour and cometh the man, and for me that man was Joe Jensen. Suddenly Hewitt and the rest of the Steelers were rattled because Jensen was dishing out the kind of torment that we were seeing from Hewitt previously. The Panthers had found that element of aggression again, but not too much and the Steelers were a mess. They took silly penalty after silly penalty and we capitalised and took the game away from them. So much to the point that Hewitt couldn't help himself and got kicked out for having a pop at Jensen.
So the fans left the arena happy and why wouldn't they? We have just beaten the Steelers 6-1, Spencer had taken a beating and the three (but felt like a lot longer) game losing streak was over. However for me it was a result that has only papered over the cracks.
We continue to rely on the Francis-Salters-Lacho line and this was evident again. They scored 4 of the 6 goals. There are no other consistent scorers in the team with the exception of Clarke who seems to score in batches. We are missing K-Wall but I think that Conway has done a decent job and was arguably the man of the match this evening. Then there is talk about Werner's return. Yes he is a highly skilled d-man but due to his attacking instincts he's not going to solve the leaks we have at the back. We have conceded 10 more goals than Coventry and 14 more than Braehead in the same amount of league games.
It was further announced that Farmer has been released by the Alaska Aces and I think we should sign him. In fact, I think it could have been part of the arrangement that allowed him to train with us that if he was released he would sign a contract with us. I am not a huge fan of Farmer, mainly because of his attempts to play the hard man, but he can score goals and more importantly he is British.
But bigger changes are needed at Panthers before I think we will look like a side that is capable of retaining the league title. We need to keep Jensen and Makela and I suspect we will see Wren and Capraro released but Ryan should also be worried. In fact I would be more than happy to see Ryan go if it means we sign another stay at home import d-man.
Lastly I just want to add that I thought that Hicks had a good game today. It is never easy controlling a game like this and the large majority of his calls were correct. Him, along with Spencer and Fata got their fair share of abuse from the spectators in Block 15 and where as I can't disagree with giving the Steelers players a bit of grief, I thought that Hicks didn't deserve it!! Roll on the 26th December!
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