20/20 Hockeyfest Preview

20/20 Hockeyfest – Sheffield Arena, Sunday 4th October 11am

This weekend will see a brave move by the Elite League come to fruition with the first 20/20 Hockeyfest at Sheffield Arena. The EIHL have been much maligned in the past, but they deserve credit for trying something different.
This new competition will see every team play on the day in quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final itself. All games will be just two periods of twenty minutes played on a running clock format and each game will be four on four. The rules for the day can be found here, I would list them but mine (and most probably yours) head would explode. In summary penalties are half of normal and questioning the refs decision is an automatic minor penalty (Steelers must be bloody delighted that Ashley Tait left in the summer now!)
The schedule of the day and face-off times are listed below:

Quarter-Finals
Hull v Sheffield 11.00
Cardiff v Belfast 12.00
Newcastle v Edinburgh 13.00
Coventry v Nottingham 14.00

Semi-Finals
Winner Q1 v Winner Q2 16.00
Winner Q3 v Winner Q4 17.00

Final
Winner Semi 1 v Winner Semi 2 19.00

One of the great selling factors of the event is the price of a ticket. £25 for the day is great value for money, it’s worth the risk of deep vein thrombosis from sitting in those seats!
Being such a different format it’s difficult to pick a winner, I believe that each team goes into the tournament with a chance of winning.

We asked Steelers announcer and Sky Sports presenter Dave Simms for his thoughts on the event. He said “It’s good to see the league thinking outside the box and trying new ideas. If it works there could be spin-offs and if it doesn’t then better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all. I hope the fans buy in, most of the clubs have. I’m not so sure Nottingham have as a club, they haven’t promoted it as we would have liked but Nottingham will go in as favourites as they are best suited to that style of play I think”

I believe Dave is being a little unfair on Nottingham there, I have seen plenty about Hockeyfest on the Panthers website and in the Evening Post. In fact it has been announced today that the event will be covered by BBC Radio in Coventry & Warwickshire, Nottingham and Sheffield.
TCW Live will also be covering the event, however please remember that the iPhone battery life isn’t the greatest, so it may be difficult to do for the whole day. There will be period end scores and end of game scores of all games that do not include the Panthers. All games that have Panthers involvement will have full TCW Live coverage (battery permitting!) Full details will be listed on here on Saturday.

For those that are still undecided and are making a last minute decision, tickets will be available on the day from Sheffield Arena box office. For just £25 for something new & exciting it’s got to be worth a shot, hasn’t it?