Its a good development but really how often will it be used. I can only think of maybe one or two draws over the entire National League history. having said that, if either team had won the draw, then the teams making the final probably would have changed. Stat geeks can prove me wrong!

Major problem will be that in some rinks there won’t be sufficient time available to run it due to other committments.

thats a good option. i like it. someone needs to talk to these rink managers, sort them out. make them “an offer they cant refuse”. I know it makes better business sense doing what they do but im sure they could let half an hour slide, just let the people going skating, at the public session, watch the rest of the game, problem solved, i doubt there would be many people who complained about getting to watch the last 20 minutes of a national league ice hockey match for free, and having their skating delayed by a mere 20 mins at the most

No Red Devils for you this year Vince? Good to see Lyndal made the squad.

Yes I believe she is Ryan. Port girl too.

Vince, does that mean that you’re attempting to try out and play for the two remaining teams that you haven’t played for??

heard fighting was spoken about again at a recent meeting, any thoughts?

@Plod, without knowing what the discussion about fighting pertained to, it is very hard to comment.

But in my opinion it is a decision that NZ needs to make soon. The first thing that needs to be considered is when you mention you play ice hockey in this country, you get the same response from everyone in two formats,

“Oh yeah is there heaps of fighting?”
with a/ a look of disdain/disgust in their eyes.
or b/ a look of intrigue and excitement in their eyes.

The question is do we market to fan a/ or fan b/. It is a very hard thing to decide as these groups well having certain main people in them (a/ being grandmas and hippies, b/ being young males) both groups have the a varied populous. So it is hard to judge what would be the best group to target.
I would argue in most of society group b/ is the majority with that innate bloodlust, that sees us watch car racing just in case some crashes, or not look away when someone falls over. Well this would seem to be lowest common denominator, its also the biggest section of society.

I would say that openly endorsing fighting is obviously a bad move for a variety of reasons, ie. guaranteed fight a game. But the blatant quashing of it leads to its own problems Dull games for fan b/ and more and more niggle being used within the game, because they know they can get away with it (note this is not a criticism of the referees, because its virtually impossible to detect a stray elbow or buttend, in a melee in the corner).

Um so the short answer is I think that fighting is part of the game, and attractive to many people, but in the same breath it detracts from the skills possessed by the players and turns some people away. So what do you do? I don’t know. Although I think 5 for fighting NHL styles is probably best answer.

@aston not sure I think its like 2 or 3 weeks out