Weekend Preview: Belfast Double Header - March 14 & 15

To say I'm incredibly uncertain of how this weekend will go, is a bit of an understatement.
On the one hand - This Belfast team have, at times, shown defensive frailty. They've been beaten by teams that we've handled, and come up short in bigger games when you'd have expected more of them. We've seen them once this year in Sheffield, and whilst they openened the scoring, it remained the only goal they scored on the night.

On the other hand, we have since been to Belfast 3 times since that result, and been beaten 5-1, 7-1 and 3-1. I've covered the 5-1 and 7-1 games already so I don't need to talk about those, but the 3-1 game I have not.
Whilst there was some back and forth about Fox's use of the (and I am paraphrasing here) term "we deserved more than we got", I dont think he's entirely off the mark. There were numerous good chances that game, and ulitmately, as has been the case so many times this season, we couldn't capitalise on the power play when we needed to the most. We've also seen a bit of a drop off in scoring in the top guys that we'd need to score, when push comes to shove recently, too. However, the loss to Nottingham in the cup seems to have very much stung that entire group, and whilst the 3-1 loss in Belfast did come after that, the performances as a whole have had a different edge to them as of late, and everyone up and down the lineup has chipped in.

All that said, the team needs to win both to be with in any shot of the title. Belfast win both and they push us 4 points further back than we already sit, and we have to rely on the likes of Panthers, Clan and Blaze to steal points from them on our behalf, and whilst that is possible, Adam Keefe has a knack of getting his team to bite down on their mouthguards and punch through when they need to.

Personally? I'd be happy with the one win. Even if we win both, we still need to rely on some miracle happening to get us closer to the mark, and I just dont think it's feasible at this point. As long as the other game isn't a complete blowout, à la 7-1, I'd be happy with taking 1 game off of them.

In terms of what does success look like for us in these 2 games? Stay structured in the d-zone. Too many times have we been confused by the fact that Belfast keep their feet moving in the o-zone, creating scissor lanes and moving the puck high to low and side to side to create confusion to the point they're walking it in. Stay structured, get in the lanes, talk to each other and communicate passing a man off when you need to. This Belfast team can, as usual under Keefe, snap the puck about, get up and down the ice in a flash, and will absolutely with no question, finish their hits, so stick to your assignments. In the o-zone, it's much of the same. This team has gone from a team with offensive frailtly to one that manages to create a good amount of offence, repeatably, every game, so stick to that plan and I think we should be golden. As usual, get the first goal, make them come to you and hit them on transition.

For players to look out for, Mike Lee is 6th in all league scoring, first amongst D men and his own team. He is a legitimate offensive weapon from the blue line, and already has 11 goals this season, which is 4th amongst D men, to go along with 33 assists. Kupsky seems to be an inspired pickup mid-season too, putting up 91.85 sv% in his 7 league games, 6 of which have been wins.