Giants 1, Phoenix 2 

Those where the mocking yet fateful words of one fan bellowing above the silent Odyssey crowd as Tony Hand controlled the puck along the half boards on a Manchester powerplay.  Before anyone had the chance to laugh or indeed cringe at the inevitable, the inevitable happened.  Tony wound up and lazered the puck high into the Giants goal to tie up the game.  He gilded across the ice with his arms in the air and intentionally or not his jersey with the number 9 and the name Hand pointing right across towards the section the now silent fan sat.  It was all going one way from then on in.

The Giants are now 5-6 in their last eleven games with one of them defeats coming in a shootout.  Not quite championship winning material for the team once in complete control of their fate.  Failing to make the playoffs is highly unlikely but the way the team and their confidence has collapsed of late you’ve got to wonder if the title favourites, final four lock in’s are going to salvage anything from this season.

After starting the New Year 3-0 Giants fans had good reason to believe the dark days of December where behind them and given Coventry’s brief slip-up, their team where in good shape to roll on and retain their title.  Then came Manchester.  A poor 3-2 defeat on Saturday night was followed up by an embarrassing 2-1 loss last night.  Not embarrassing in the sense that the defeat came to Manchester but embarrassing with regards to some players effort.  They went one up early and all seemed well, but 38 shots later they remained on a total of one goal with the guys who in the first few months where scoring for fun, unable to hit a barn door.  The days when the Giants had four guys in the top five in league scoring and averaging over four goals per game seem a long way away.

One man void of all blame is goalie Mike Minard.  There’s nothing he could do about the result and had no chance on either goal.  When Manchester scored their second and the game winner, Mike proceeded to show his frustration to the team in front of him by throwing his stick at the plexi glass on two occasions before breaking it up.  I feared to see what he would have done had he got his hands on one of the players.  It was no coincidence that Roman Gavalier was the man to go talk to him.

The forwards looked laboured throughout, it looked like the ten yard dash was an effort and that they had weights in their skates.  One minute someone would step up with an excellent play, the next the same guy would make a blunder turning the puck over.  The defence looked loose at times, Gavalier was on his game as always but with the usually exceptional Morin logging yet another ton of ice time, he struggled for a change.  Kelman and Walton together had it hard and a lack of defensive depth in the team is beginning to show by the game.  Kelman’s form of late has been hard to put a finger on, the offensive defenseman, after averaging over a point per game through the first twenty games has just three in his last fifteen (he managed one helper in last nights contest).  Some are linking the dip in scoring from the blue-line to his announcement of taking over the reigns as GM next season and on a training basis this year.  To be fair to Killer, he’s playing alongside young Graeme Walton, who although having a terrific season by his standards is no Gavalier or Morin and Todd often finds himself covering up for the young Belfast boy.

Still, it’s in the forward department where the problems really lie of late.

Changes are what the fans are crying out for, but even that mightn’t help at this stage.  Coach Ed Courtenay is fast running out of ideas with his team.  He’s exhausted all avenues, he’s mixed and matched the lines so much that everyone has played with everyone else and yet the scoring rut continues.  No doubt he’s went over and over the powerplay at practice all week yet it continues to struggle.  As for them changes, well where do you start?  In an ideal bad situation you would have three or four players to point the finger to who where dragging the team down but in this case it’s the entire team who are collectively struggling.  Unless you want to hand them all their P45’s with the exception of the ever impressive Roman Gavalier.

Watching last night I convinced myself of one thing - Should George Awada ever leave this team, (and I’m not suggesting he do - he’s had little luck in front of goal this year but continues to work hard for the cause) the ‘C’ should go straight onto the chest of Roman Gavalier.  He may not speak much English, but the sweat he serves up for the cause of the Belfast Giants night in night out speaks volumes that any hockey player or fan understands.

Giants-History.com 3 stars:
1st Star: Roman Gavalier - Skated all night long, worked his ass off.
2nd Star: Mike Minard - The only man who could do nothing about the shambles in front of him.
3rd Star: Curtis Huppe - Grabbed our only goal.  Remains our only in form forward.

Category: Game Recaps (06-07) » » |

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