Victims of Our Own Success

Posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 5:58 pm

19 games in 38 days… That is what we could be facing starting this weekend and going through to the end of the regular season.. That is a hectic schedule by NHL standards, but when you consider the roster sizes of this year’s team, you can understand how grueling this season has been on the Coors Belfast Giants.

I have to applaud my team and everything they have been through. People often don’t consider how hard it is to play this many games and travel between matches like we have to here in Belfast. Think of the Panthers or the Steelers, they are usually back in the comfort of their own houses after nearly every game during the season, bar the games in Belfast.

Ask other teams how much the travel to Belfast wears them out. Every time we play a team, someone will talk to me about the terrible day of travel they have had, getting up for an early morning flight, taking a bus to the airport, all usually before 9am.. Try doing it 30 times a year.

Still we cannot complain. You get used to the travel and maybe this year we are victims of our own success, but hopefully at the end of the season we have a couple of trophies to remind us why its worth the early mornings every single week. When it is all over, nobody will ever talk about the flights or the bus rides, but the games we won and hopefully there are plenty more to come.

We are struggling with injury, but we will get a couple bodies back into the line up over the next couple of weeks and we are playing for two Championships already and hopefully poised to make a run at the playoff title as well.

I hope to know when the fixtures will be played for the Challenge Cup and K.O. Cup in the next day or two. I have given in our dates to the league along with the dates that the other teams are available, but right now the two teams we are playing or likely to play (Cardiff and Manchester) both have nearly as heavy of schedules as we do, so it is proving difficult to get desirable dates for all of us without jamming in a ridiculous amount of games into one week.

We have one potential date at the Odyssey for a Cup Final, but it is closing in and if the other team cannot play that night, we will have to consider the option of playing all the remaining Cup games in the Ice Bowl. We will explore the options of moving a league game but before you light up the forums or call the office to ask about that, we will have to consider travel plans, booked flights, and schedules for the rest of the teams that would be affected.

Don’t worry, you all will know as soon as I know..

Todd Kelman
General Manager