English Premier League round up

SWINDON, UK – Prohockeynews welcomes it’s newest contributor as Bill Collins joins the team. Bill has been writing updates for Swindon Wildcats and Guildford Flames for some time so we are delighted he has come on board with Prohockeynews to share his work with a wider audience. Bill will be providing weekly updates and news from the English Premier League. Here is his first instalment: Swindon Wildcats player-coach Ryan Aldridge stormed into forth place in the English Premier League’s top ten penalty minutes chart and second in the British penalty chart with 96Pim closely followed in eighth by colleague Joe Baird on 81. Wildcats’ Aaron Nell re-entered the British Points Scorers chart at number 10. Manchester Phoenix’s Adam Walker is now down to tenth in the top goalscorers chart; the sole Brit. Interestingly MK Lightning, now at the top of the league, are only the seventh highest points scoring team. So, into week 17 and on top of Flames’ Nathan Rempel’s face injury comes another freak accident at Romford this time to Callum Fowler, the Peterborough Phantoms forward, who has broken is jaw in two places and will be out for at least a month. And talking of injuries, there’s more. Lot’s more, especially in the Phantoms camp. Julian Smith and James Spurr still out and what with Callum Fowler’s broken cheek and now Maris Ziedens has suffered a repeat of his knee injury which it appears wasn’t fully recovered. And if that wasn’t enough, new Canadian D-man Doug MacIver went off Sunday with a leg injury, but although he returned to the ice, he was obviously carrying a problem. Also on the injury front, Sheffield Scimitars reported captain Peter Slamiar is also out with an injury, and the Lightning have signed Finnish forward Joakin Wiklander as temporary cover for the injured Andre Smulter. Mid-week brought a couple of surprises in the coaching field. Wildcats announced player-coach Ryan Aldridge, now aged 32 and currently awaiting a disciplinary hearing, is to give up his skating roll to concentrate on coaching.

This was closely followed by the Romford Raiders Canadian player-coach Jesse Hammill announcing he is leaving club to return to work in Canada at the end of the month in a non-sporting position. No replacement so far announced. Meanwhile Bracknell Bees player-coach boss Claude Dumas has brought in Canadian former netminder Brian Hepp to help coach both his own reduced form this season, and to assist the bench when he is playing. Dumas has vowed to improve his squad before signing deadline at the end of the month, and with the loss of Ryan Watt to Slough Jets, Finnish forward Matti Hietakangas, who joined at a similar point last season, is rumoured to be favourite to put pen to paper. With the league cap on four imports in a match squad, Dumas is saying nothing about his own position at the bottom of the import pile, so could well be his name in the frame to go. In the World Junior Championships Sweden won the bronze medal beating Switzerland a comfortable 11-4. But the final encounter between Canada and the US was another cracker with Canada’s all-time leading goal scorer Jordan Eberle scoring twice in the last three minutes of normal time only to be thwarted in overtime, ending Canada’s hope of making history with six straight wins. The greatest compliment came from US coach Dean Blais commenting, ‘We played Canadian hockey…gritty. We learned from the best.’ The cancelled Phoenix/Scimitars game of 20th December 2009, it was announced, has been rescheduled for 28th January 2010. In week 17 games several, as feared, were postponed due to the weather. Of the survivors, Bison made an impressive comeback at Swindon recovering from a 3-1 deficit to win in overtime. The single point wasn’t enough to nudge the Wildcats back up to eighth place because Bracknell, immediately above them, had a great win away from home against Sheffield. Phoenix had another nail-biting evening having to come from behind to eventually win in a splendid game against the Phantoms, again in overtime. Well done to the Phantoms for prising a point there. Guildford continued their roll with another comfortable win, this time at home to Romford. But perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was Slough beating the currently strong Milton Keynes on their home ground 4 -2. The Jets are now on an equal points footing with the Phoenix in second, so things are getting interesting at the top. More interesting next week methinks when the Guildford Flames, now breathing down the necks of the top boys, have home and away fixtures against Manchester and the Jets meet the Lightning. I, for one, can’t wait! Comment on this story Comment@Prohockeynews.com