Blaze vs Giants double header preview

Scheduling: it’s a perennial bugbear amongst all sports fans, and can sometimes lead to the strangest of scenarios.

In football, a team may not play each other for months, only to face one another at home and then away within the space of two weeks. Fans grumble over consecutive away games taking their team to opposite ends of the country one weekend and then the next; coaches and managers gripe at fixture bunching when they are involved in competitions outside of their main domestic competition.

And of course there are international breaks to contend with. Even in the Elite League, which will see some teams with a week off when Team GB travels to Japan next weekend, and others still in action at home – including Hull who will controversially lose their starting netminder, whilst the likes of Belfast and Sheffield get a week off.

When ice hockey schedules are put together all these issues are compounded by external pressures on venues where hockey may be just one of several attractions jostling for prime time slots; only last week we saw the Belfast Giants shift two fixtures due to the Odyssey Arena’s clause enabling them to shunt hockey in favour of a more high profile sporting event.

It’s a funny old thing, and it can’t be easy for those at the helm to organise a well-balanced schedule that suits all parties. Despite this, it seems strange that two months into the current EIHL season, two teams in the same conference have not yet met one another in competition. These are teams due to play one another 8 times in the course of a season. And this weekend, the Coventry Blaze will play host to league-leading Belfast Giants not once, but twice.

This, in itself, is notable in that the Blaze have never hosted any team for a double-header in the Elite League. So it’s a weekend of firsts. For me too, as I travel to the Skydome for the first time, and will view this exciting Coventry Blaze side in the flesh for the first time.

Not to mention the fact that I will try one of Taylor’s Butchers’ famed pork parcels for the first time – priorities and all that.

It’s left me torn, as I wrestle with split loyalties. Last season I made no secret of the fact I was a Belfast sympathiser, mainly due to my fondness for the city and the many friends I had made on my trips across the Irish sea. I was pleased they won the Championship but I could not call myself a ‘fan’, smarting as I still was from the loss of my Newcastle Vipers.

This season, I was intrigued and excited by the prospect of the side Paul Thompson was putting together in Coventry even before a skate was laced, so imagine my surprise when it came to pass that not only were Blaze the feisty underdogs that I had imagined them to be, they were real contenders in both the league and the Erhardt Conference; this was a team with the X-Factor. Dogged, determined, fiery and passionate, and with team spirit in spades. I imagined I may have found myself a new favourite EIHL side for the 2012/13 season.

And then I went to Landshut. And the Giants got to me. I wore the jersey. I sang the songs. I said ‘we’ accidentally on more than one occasion. I can’t very well turn my back on them just two weeks later, can I?

It’s annoying because I had hoped this weekend would be one in which I could divest myself of the vestiges of tedious neutrality and really bang a drum for a team, for once. But surprisingly, it’s not the team I was expecting that is stealing my heart. Which sadly condemns me to my usual spot, getting a sore behind from perching on the fence. Why couldn’t it be a Panthers double-header? That would make things so much easier.

The best I can hope for is a barn-storming weekend of hockey that lives up to the high standards I have come to expect from both sides. The Blaze look to be almost at full strength following the return midweek of defenceman Jerramie Domish. The Giants also boast a full complement of players and will come to the Midlands with the express purpose of making a statement to the conference and the league, having failed to maximise on their home double header against Sheffield.

So which way will it go? It’s difficult to tell having not seen the sides against one another, and not knowing which Giants side will turn up – the one who limped to a 5-1 defeat against the Steelers and a 7-1 loss to Landshut in Germany, or the one which dominated against the Steelers the very next day, or took out the trash beating the Geleen Eaters 11-1 on the first day of the Continental Cup.

One thing is certain, regardless of what adversity they may face, the Blaze will bring their ‘A’ game, and they will need to. It remains to be seen how these two sides will stack up one on one and it’s a thrilling prospect.