Hull Stingrays

Christian from The F Block Blog previews the 2009/10 season for the Rays

How much can a change of coach affect a club? Well, on the evidence of the a few months of Sylvain Cloutier signings, a huge amount. The buzz around the Stingrays fan base over the past few weeks, in the run up to their fourth Elite League season, is incomparable to the feeling around the Hull Arena following soul destroying losses to Cardiff and Edinburgh in two must win clashes on the final weekend of last season under former coach Rick Strachan.
A new coach and new feeling, but Cloutier has kept a surprisingly large core of players from last season, evidence enough that his predecessor Strachan may have had the right players playing the wrong game. Impressive point-per-game import forwards Matt Reynolds, Jeff Glowa and Konstantin Kalmikov have been joined up front by Cloutier, himself with 131 career points in 115 Elite League games, and sniper Curtis Huppe, who has 98 goals in four EIHL seasons. This is clearly the most exciting part of our lineup this season.
Meanwhile Brit forwards Lee Mitchell, Lee Esders and Slava Koulikov, who combined last season for 85 points, are joined by former Basingstoke Brit forward Shaun Thompson, who scored 17 goals and 40 points last year. Our offense has taken a notable upgrade, certainly in comparison to other areas of the squad where upgrades have been less obvious.
Cloutier has backed the relatively inexperienced netminder Tommy Sandahl to guard our net and, in turn, be one of the finds of the season, after his brother, former NHL stopper Dan Cloutier, chose the Swede from a shortlist of players to replace Curtis Cruickshank.
In defence Kerr, Wilson, Turunen and Neumeier have been replaced by players of similar stature stat wise, and presumably budget wise, in Stephen Burns, Ryan Jorde and Adam Knight, with Pavel Gomenyuk the only returnee to the team’s blue line. James Hutchinson, a 50 pointscorer and treble winner in the EPL last season, has joined, and gives the team’s defence a much needed offensive boost, whilst Craig Mitchell, brother of forward Lee, has signed from Edinburgh to give us three lines of defence, something we dearly missed last term in the crux of our injury crisis.
Overall the Rays have taken notable steps to improving on previous years, unfortunately, after the departure of Manchester and Basingstoke, they have already made the playoffs, and so, with that milestone gone, finishing outside the bottom two should be a tough but achievable goal.

It has been a similar story right across the league with most teams seemingly building on their squads from last season, and it does look set to be one of the most exciting yet, certainly for Rays fans.
Sheffield should/will be in the mix again, however, their replacement signings for Lehman, Munn, Finnerty and Tait say consolidation rather than strengthened to me.
The signing of Cameron Mann and return of Sean McAslan has propelled Nottingham into title contention with very few obvious weaknesses from the off, if they get a good start, I think they may be hard to stop.
Coventry look to have replenished their title winning stocks with a backbone of Peter Hirsch, Brian Lee, Greg Chambers and Greg Owen added this summer to the all star cast of Jonathan Weaver, Adam Calder and Dan Carlson. The Blaze are my favourites for the title.
Goals will again be the order of the day in Belfast with a top heavy defence, a supposedly weaker British netminder and a free scoring attack, including my tip for the top Pierre Luc Faubert, who will surely be up amongst the league’s top scorers, they have goals but I’m not convinced they have a Steelers like defence to win it all.
The Devils have renewed efforts to break into the top four with the re-signings of Mark Smith and Max Birbraer, and, although certainly strengthened, I don’t think there there is enough quality in their depth.
Up North and again it may be a frustrating season. Newcastle have transformed into a younger side, loaded with mid level ECHL talent, who I think could surprise a little, whilst Edinburgh, who have, so far, signed Lambert, Allen and Fussey but have still to sign their most important player, the backstop.

Predictions
1- Coventry
2- Nottingham
3- Sheffield
4- Belfast
5- Cardiff
6- Newcastle
7- Stingrays
8- Edinburgh