Date with a Devil

CARDIFF, UK – The 2009-10 EIHL saw the Cardiff Devils reach the finals of both the Challenge Cup and the Playoffs, making them the season’s most successful sports team in Wales.
 
But an arena filled with high expectations is never the easiest place to enter, especially when it is also your first time in the country.
 
Unless, of course, you are arriving in Cardiff straight from having lifted a coveted CHL trophy.
 
This year, new forward Jon Pelle joined the Devils after a season that saw him win the CHL Playoffs with Rapid City Rush.
 
Pelle said: “It’s a really hard thing to do – to win a championship – in any league, and we were in a very competitive league last year, so to get that far and to win it was really something pretty special.
 
“It’s definitely something I’ll carry with me and I hope to continue with the success: once you get that feeling of winning it all you want it again, so I’m definitely looking to win some more silverware this year if I can.”
 
The American already looks more than capable of helping the Devils lift at least one of British ice hockey’s three trophies, having totalled 11 points – seven goals and four assists – from only six games.
 
“My job is to score goals and get points, and when I do my job we have a better chance of winning, and that’s the ultimate goal,” Pelle said.
 
“Personally, G’s [Devils player-coach Gerad Adams] asked me to be in the Top 10 for scoring in the League, and if I’m not doing that then I won’t be too happy.
 
“But I think I have every opportunity to be amongst the top scorers: I’ve got lots of ice time and I’m playing with Scott [Matzka] and Max [Birbraer] who are both great point producers and have both played at a high level.
 
All three first line Devils players have also competed in continental Europe, an experience that Pelle claims has helped him to adjust to playing on the League’s larger sheets:
 
“It actually is a different game when you get on the bigger sheets and it’s really nothing we can do in practice because we have the small sheet, so it’s just stuff we have to talk about and then think about when we’re out there.”
 
While the size of the ice pad is outside of their control, there is always at least one thing that the team can do in preparation for their matches: gym work.
 
“The guys at Fitness Factory are pretty helpful: they’ll design a workout for us, a circuit with some body weight stuff – squats – and then we’ll do chin-ups to work our shoulders and upper body; they do a pretty good job of working out our whole body over the course of an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes,” said Pelle.
 
“It’s interval training: you go hard for a minute or two and then you rest for a minute because in a hockey game you’re maybe on the ice for 45 seconds to 1 minute, and you’re on very hard and then you rest for two or three minutes, so you try and replicate that in the workouts.
 

“For hockey, they usually say that [the most important area of your body is] from the top of your knees to your abdomen. In hockey you’re usually set low – you want to have you knees bent, all of your power comes from your thighs and your core, so most of the workout’s focused on that.”
 
In addition to making sure that he is physically ready for games, Pelle also spends time on match days ensuring that he is mentally prepared, starting on his own before later joining up with his teammates.
 
“You usually get to the rink about two hours before the game, and that’s when you really start thinking about it: you maybe want to visualise some of things you want to do and you think about your opponent a little bit because every team’s different and you want to think about the best way to prepare for that opponent.
 
“G will prepare us with a scout report on the other team so we know what to expect – so there are no surprises when we get out there.
 
“In this league there are only nine other teams, so once you’ve played somebody once or twice you get a feel for their tendencies. You can’t prepare exactly for what you’re going to see because there are so many guys on the ice and it changes, but you’ll find that teams like to do certain things.
 
“ Belfast, for example, will keep one player at the far blue line while they’re in the defensive zone –they’ll have four in the defensive zone and keep one away from the play – so we’ll have to keep a guy back there with them and that’s one thing we have to think about during the game.
 
“But, a lot of the time, you don’t want to worry too much about the opponent: you want to just say “we’ll play our style, our game and, if we play it right, we should be fine” – we don’t want to worry too much about what they’re doing, we want to do what we do well.”
 
When it comes to the Devils’ style of play, there is no doubt as to what that involves:
 
“Overall, I’d say that we’re a pretty physical, pretty aggressive, pretty fast team and we like to play that way, so if we do that efficiently we’re usually pretty successful,” Pelle said.
 
“We’re better than we’ve been playing and I think we all know that – there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to win something this year.
 
“There’s a million excuses as to why we started so poorly and everyone has their own theories. Personally, I think we’ve been a little hesitant and it’s actually just been a lot of small details that we’re not doing very well.
 
“It’s one of those things that when we correct them I think we’ll be in a really good spot, it’s just been a little bit of lack of focus and concentration – just mental errors – and when we clean the up I think we’ll be headed in the right direction.”
 
It seems that the Cardiff Devils are now heading in the right direction: their defeat of the Belfast Giants Sept. 19^th means that they have become the first team this season to prevent the Giants from gaining a League point.
 
As for Pelle, he is currently ranked 4th within the League’s top points’ earners – well within Gerad Adams’ desired Top 10.
 
Things are definitely looking up for the Welsh side and their latest American recruit.
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