Welcome to the Hangar and our Halloween special this evening against the Manchester Phoenix. A warm welcome also to the travelling supporters who I hope had a safe journey down.
Tonight we’ve got some Halloween fun going on with hopefully some younger supporters dressed up and taking part in the “treasure hunt” as well as the photo after the game but on the ice as always it will be very serious as the Jets go out to look to collect another two points in a game that would see the winner (a regulation time win anyway) claim top spot.
The Jets travelled to Manchester a couple of weeks back and were just short on that night of the 2 points with Phoenix levelling a tight game in the final few minutes and then carving out the winner in OT. I fear our curious scheduling of playing mainly one game weekends may have had a factor in that result as most other teams were playing 120 minutes a week we were playing only 60 meaning we were short on opportunities to achieve that second night stamina.
Still that result is history now, can’t be changed and credit to the Phoenix for pulling off the win but it’s now all about tonight and what happens in front of us on the ice this evening.
The once hockey hotbed that was The Hockey Forum is, I feel, slowly dying off given the created difficulty for new members to join, perhaps created by the fact that only one person has the authority to process member registrations. It was once the case that THF was a reflection of the hockey community and the place to discuss hockey however these days a lot of once vocal members seem to no longer post, perhaps they drifted away from the sport, and for a very long time now they haven’t been replaced by new supporters as joining is a near impossible task. I remember reading through on average 5 or 6 pages discussion following a Jets game, every game, these days it’s nothing like that as there just isn’t the volume of current supporters within the THF membership.
Facebook and Twitter together with the explosion of blogging sites have offered supporters from all around the league the opportunity to share their views on hockey. There are some excellent and knowledgeable authors in the league who write some excellent blog articles. Some analyse the hockey impartially, some with a biased towards their team twist and some take a light hearted look but the beauty is it’s all personal opinion and a great way to read what people actually think. I’m all for the sharing of opinion, whether it be within 140 characters on Twitter or via a well written blog as it gives an opinionated view of hockey to the casual observers that the clubs cannot give in their more subjective writings. For me, I believe that clubs’ media output should deal in facts and figures, happenings and statistics and leave the opinions to the blogging authors and from interactions on Twitter it seems that I’m not alone in that thinking.
Anyway, I feel that’s enough rambling for this week. Let’s get down to business tonight and that business is the clapping, cheering, chanting and drumming and making sure it’s a party atmosphere tonight. A great atmosphere can play a big part in lifting your team to win so let’s make that home advantage count this evening in this top of the table clash.
My team, your team, OUR TEAM.
Mark
