For the opening night of games on October 10th, 2019, at 8:30 we have the Novotel Spitfires going head to head with Hertz. Both teams fought hard, but the Spitfires won the game in the closing seconds 5-3. Hertz peppered rookie goaltender, Yu Cheng Liao (Leo) with 42 shots of which he stopped 39, earning himself the Rolling Stone Pizza Player of the Game.
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Our opening night of the 4th season of the Sport Corner Siam Hockey League was on October 10th, 2019. Before the opening ceremony, Dom interviewed the captains for this years teams.
The first interview was of the captain for PEAK, Harrison Oztemel.
The second interview was with Novotel Spitfires captain, Brad Wilson.
The third interview was with the captain of Hertz, Jordan Ashton.
The last interview was with Aware captain, Justin St-Denis.
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We had a whirl wind of a year this year. Captain, Patrik Lundback, led Team Aware to a 10 game win streak to start off the season, finally losing to TRUE on January 20, 2019.
At the end of the regular season, Aware topped the pack with 30 points. The closest team were the Novotel Spitfires with 20 points.
Captain, Brad Wilson, led the Novotel Spitfires had a 5-4 record going into the Christmas break, and finished off the regular season with 20 points.
Mike Wilson’s TRUE team started off rough, losing their first 10 games of the season, finally beating Hertz on the January 13 and they finished off the season with 15 points.
The defending champions, Hertz, led by Justin St-Denis, started off the season with a 4-6 record, and really struggled in the second half of the season, coming in last place with 12 points.
In the first game of the playoffs we had Aware(1) facing off against Hertz(4) and the Novotel Spitfires(2) against TRUE(3). Hertz took Aware to all three games, and in the final game, Hertz opened things up first and just kept fighting, beating Aware 5-3 to advance to the finals.
TRUE controlled the Novotel Spitfires, and swept Novotel to advance to the finals.
The final game, between Hertz and TRUE was hard fought. TRUE took the lead in the first period, but Hertz fought back in the second period but were still behind 2-1. Hertz tied things up in the third period, 3-3 to force overtime. Things were still tied at the end of the playoff period forcing a shootout. Yean Thanakroekkiat of Hertz found the back of the net to give Hertz a back to back championship.
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Hertz captain Justin St Denis didn’t say that — Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was the one who coined the term — but he might as well have. Hertz THUMPED the Novotel Spitfires 10-2 in week eight of the SHL season as payback for a 9-3 thumping at the hands of Novotel earlier in the year.
Novotel keeper Gabor Toth went from earning the first shutout of the SHL season a week previously with a stand-out performance to playing, well, can we just say that SHL analysts are still searching for a way to describe it.
It must be noted that Novotel was missing four key players (Corry Day, Ken Kindborn, Matt Johnson and David Boere) but they did have all-star sub Patrick Forstner in the line-up.
No matter, Hertz, missing four players as well. added subs Bass Wilailux and Non Aekkasemnarong, and they just came out flying and didn’t let up. In this game, Hertz had four players who play for the Nakaraj team in the BIHL (Bass, Non, as well as Mangkorn Sukwiboon and Yean Thanakroekkiat— the four also play for the Thai national team). They were fast and Novotel’s aging second line (Jason Bitter, Jouni Heinonen & Scott Murray) just couldn’t keep up.
St. Denis was the Rolling Stone Pizza player of the game for his four-goal and five-point performance. Darius Konotopetz also turned in an outstanding game earning five points as well with three goals and two assists. Andy Brine playing defense added three assists on perfect tape-to-tape passes. Multiple Hertz players had two-point nights.
In the end,
Game two was ever so close as TRUE trailed AWARE 2-1 with ten minutes to go when AWARE’s ice magicians added two late goals to keep AWARE undefeated at 8-0 and TRUE winless at 0-8. Roman Larin and Harrison Oztemel staked AWARE to a 2-0 first-period lead but Jordan Ashton closed the gap to one early in the second. Winnie Luckanatinakorn put in what looked like a choreographed goal on a rebound from a Phu Suwachirat shot to make it 3-1 and then Juhani Ijas (Winnie’s and Phu’s coach on the Thai national team) put on a piece of stickhandling wizardry to cement the win.
Jason Cotsmire was the Rolling Stone Pizza player-of-the-game; subbing for injured Lance Parker, he played brilliantly turning aside 35 of the 39 shots he faced seeing his first SHL action of the year. Patrick Leduc turned aside 16 of the 17 shots fired his way.
After eight games, Novotel’s Corry Day still leads the
The final games of the SHL 2018 calendar year will be played this Sunday December 16th with TRUE looking for its first win against Novotel at 8:30pm and Hertz trying to hand AWARE its first defeat of the season at 9:30pm. Admission is free and all games take place at the Rink, 7th floor, Central Grand Rama IX. Games will resume in the New Year on Sunday January 13th.
We had some high flying games this week. In our first game we had TRUE. The Big Red Juggernaut just kept rolling on, and there wasn’t anything that TRUE could do to stop them in this one. The final. score of the night was TRUE 2 with 28 shots, Aware 9 with 39 shots.
In our second game of the night we had the Novotel Spitfires vs Hertz. The White Walkers Line of the Spitfires just dominated the game this week with Brandon netting himself a hat-trick and an assist, Michael White putting up two goals and two assists and Corry Day adding three assists to his total.
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In our second game of the night we had the Novotel Spitfires facing off against Hertz. The Spitfires dominated this game and won it 9-3. The Rolling Stone Pizza Player of the Game went to Brandon Vick for his hat-trick and an assist.
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In our first game of the night we had Hertz going head to head with TRUE. This game was a close one with Hertz pulling off a 2-1 win and the Rolling Stone Pizza Player of the Game going to Dream Ungkulpattanasuk for stoping 35-36 shots.
In our second game of the night, we had Aware vs. Novotel Spitfires. Aware dominated this with a win of 7-4 and the Rolling Stone Pizza Player of the Game went to Juhani Ijas for scoring 2 goals on the night.
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We had some exciting games this week. In our first week, we had the Novotel Spitfires going head to head with TRUE. This game saw TRUE score a quick just over one minute into the game, but they just couldn’t hold on as the Novotel Spitfires put up six unanswered goals by the end of the second period. TRUE added a second goal in the third period, but they just couldn’t stop the Spitfires who won this one 7-2.
In our second game, we had the Big Red Juggernaut, Aware facing off against Hertz. This was a very defensive game for both teams that saw a scoreless first period. Less than a minute into the second period, Aware’s Harrison Oztemel found the back of the net. Less than four minutes in to the third period, Aware added another when captain Patrick Lundback fired a wrister past Hertz’s netminder, Dream Ungkulpattanasuk. Hertz’s captain, Justin St.Denis scored in the third, but Aware’s Phu Suwachirat sealed the victory with a power play goal. The final score of the game was Aware 3, Hertz 2.
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On October 28, 2018 we had our third week of games. In our first game we had Hertz vs the Novotel Spitfires in a battle for second place. The Spitfires were strong defensively and able to hold off Hertz and win this one 3-1
In our second game, we had a struggling TRUE facing off against the number one team, Aware. TRUE got on the scoreboard early, but they just couldn’t contain Aware offensively. The final score of the game was 6-3
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In our third week of games, in game one, we had Hertz gaming off against the Novotel Spitfires in a battle for second place. Both teams played hard, but the Spitfires solid defense allowed them to keep Hertz from scoring more than one goal. For his outstanding defensive play, Ken Kindborn was awarded the Rolling Stone Pizza Player of the Game.
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