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I’ll share where I’m looking at pushing Dunedin to over the next year. Our current situation is:
We have about 100+ members, plus about 150 high school players (there’s some crossover there).
Our rink is a different setup from most other clubs. We own our rink with the other two ice sport clubs, they’ll subsidise things that are important to us (currently Dunedin Thunder and our Learn to Play programme). We don’t have a problem getting more ice time, and the rink will shift around or cancel other things to accommodate us, within reason. We can therefore afford to keep ice hockey quite cheap – Learn to Play costs kids $5/practice, we can put on games for youth club members on Saturday night for $5/game, $10 for seniors.We’ve been investing heavily in gear, and apart from wanting a couple more sets of youth goalie gear, we can do just about anything we desire.
We have two things that we’re going to try and work on next year:
1. Our progression structure falls over as kids finish U16s. We have very good U13s, good U16s, and then there’s no contact league between that and NZIHL. We’ll be looking at two things – creating what is effectively an U19 league using high school teams. And creating a pre-NZIHL premiere league to increase the number of players available for Thunder selection and raise the standard of ice hockey generally.
2. Push our Learn to Play programme, which currently has maybe 20 – 30 kids going through it a year, to have twice as many kids. We’d like to have Atom games like they do in bigger centers, and we’d like to have a lot more kids coming through to U13 and then progressing up the ages.
A couple of weaknesses, both of which we’re working on, are referees and coaches. We have fairly good numbers of both, but all relatively new and inexperienced. The club has some financial resources that we have which we’re investing in these areas.
"vpatrol":39hmmnlf wrote:What I want is the best product on the ice to showcase ice hockey in NZ. The import players who are on the leaderboard should be included.That would be an all star game.
[/quote:39hmmnlf]I’m dubious about a game in front of… 3 – 400 people, pretty much all of whom are already ice hockey fans, doing much to showcase NZ ice hockey. Yes it would be a good game, but you’ll get as good a game in Christchurch or better this weekend at the final.
It’s my understanding that it has a dual purpose, and one of those purposes is a trial for next years ice blacks. In that case, it wouldn’t make sense to only have 18 or so NZers playing, you need to trial at least 30 to check out the next tier down.
Southern Juniors have been pretty bad the past couple of years. They should be a lot more competitive this year, they’ve had all the better players commit to nationals, there’s a bunch of NZIHL players in the team (7 or so?).
Southern midgets won’t be as strong as last two years, where they’ve narrowly taken gold over Auckland in a couple of fantastic tournaments – midgets were the games to watch both in Dunedin and Canterbury. Not sure how the other two regions will be relative to previous years.
U13s Auckland are the reigning champions. Expect Canterbury to be strong this year after investing in some younger guys last year. Southern probably had their best team last year with some great final year kids, but they’ll still be strong this year. This age group seems to jump around a lot as there’s a lot of transition year to year.
"cowgirl":2wk32txj wrote:"Azzy77":2wk32txj wrote:Was nice to meet some other forum users and put a face to some of the comments.
[/quote:2wk32txj]Was nice to meet you too
” title=”Wink” />
[/quote:2wk32txj]Sorry we try not to let Aaron out without his minders, he must have escaped for the weekend.
Rest assured, security has been tightened for this weekend, you won’t see him in Christchurch.
"kelf6966":33sq16s4 wrote:Will be a great couple of games,
The Stampede line of Speirs, Lee and Glass seemed to have a number over the aussies
in the weekend!I go Stampede 2 – 0
[/quote:33sq16s4]The Soffer, Heyd, Eaden line did OK as well of course
” title=”Wink” />I’m picking admirals will win one of their final games against the Swarm.
Anyone know why they’re playing tonight? Is this a replacement for this weekend or an additional game?
I reckon not Vince. The players would have been going “if I can score a goal on Roberto, I’m going to be an Australian ice hockey legend forever. I’ll get him to sign my stick after the game and I’ll sleep with it rather than my girlfriend.”
Or something like that.
I didn’t really get to see Saturday’s game very well, I was busy chasing my daughter around. The whole team played pretty different on Sunday though.
I thought Zak had a great game. A number of times I thought Australia was going to score (I was sitting right behind the NZ net in first and last periods) and he made great reaction saves stacking pads. Completely different style than Rick.
I suspect Roberto Luongo couldn’t have won that first game. Team just wasn’t there. It was noticeable that a couple of times Zak got caught out of goal players were diving to try and block shots or knock away pucks. Some real heart stoppers. That didn’t seem to happen as much on Saturday.
"Ryan":ktualx1b wrote:Perhaps the bridging idea could come from the SIHL Open grade? The Dunedin Open grade team could be used as a Thunder development team perhaps?[/quote:ktualx1b]
SIHL open grade hasn’t been particularly successful the past few years. You’d also have to get queenstown to agree not to send their stampede players.
The other issue is that part of the problem is that people don’t especially want to travel. And why would we make them travel when we can make our own domestic hockey grade here – more hockey for less.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/2779883/Ic … -Games-win
2000 strong crowd. Heh.
Cory Down announces his retirement after the match. Respect.
