It may be Valentine’s week, but the Nottingham Panthers have not given fans much to love about them in the last month. In the last twelve games, Panthers have lost eight. In what was increasingly being speculated as a possibility as we near the end of another mediocre season, Head Coach, Corey Neilson and the club have announced that they will part ways, by mutual consent, at the end of the season.
Given the team’s form over the last five years, it may well have been anticipated, but it is still a dramatic move to separate from the most successful ever coach for Nottingham and also in the Elite League. Neilson has been in post for ten years and his departure marks the end of an era that was incredibly successful for the Panthers, winning 14 trophies in all, including the Elite League for the first time in 57 years, seven Challenge Cups, five Play Off trophies, and the first ever European Continental Cup for any UK team, all under his guidance.
Neilson is a Canadian-British defenceman who was previously drafted in the NHL by the Edmonton Oilers, spending several seasons in the ECHL and AHL. He moved to join the Nottingham Panthers as a player in 2006, became a player-coach in 2008 where he admits he “was always a bit of a nerd when it came to systems, tactics and drills. It is something I’ve loved since an early age when I worked as a hockey instructor at fifteen. We made some tactical changes and won the Challenge Cup”.
He was promoted to Head Coach in 2012-13 which was the grand slam winning year, and he retired from playing part-way through the season. He changed the playing style of the Panthers to become a more attacking team, coining the phrase “sexy Neilson hockey”. He brought success to Nottingham in Europe in 2016-17 by leading the team to win the Continental Cup. This led to qualification in the Champions Hockey League in 2017-18 where Nottingham were seeded bottom out of 32 teams and despite this, competed positively, finishing in the last sixteen.
His playing shirt, number 77, was the fifth to be retired by the club, on the same night that the club was presented with its first league championship trophy since 1956. Neilson issued an emotional statement on the Panthers website, on Wednesday 14 February summarising his time in Nottingham as “one hell of a ride” and “winning here is like a drug. I wanted more”. He thanked everyone involved in the club for their support, his players, coaching team, family and he will stay in post to the end of the season.
So things must have gone off the tracks badly to get to this point. Going back to December 9th, Panthers have lost 17 out of 25 games. The team is currently a lowly seventh out of twelve in the league table, which for one of the big four Arena teams (Nottingham, Sheffield, Belfast and Cardiff) is poor. Rookie team, Guildford, brand new to the Elite League this year, are ahead of Nottingham. The form is baffling, considering the reportedly large budget invested, the star quality players that were brought in from all over the world and early form clearly showing some magic on the ice, leading the Elite League in the Autumn and boldly beating several top flight European teams against the odds in the Champions Hockey League.
The team has struggled to show the week-in, week-out consistency required to win the league. Since the big league win in 2012/13, Nottingham has had an oddly predictable pattern to the season that recruits exciting players, starts out well, form car crashes in December and results in a frustrating mid-table finish, usually picking up at least one other Cup or Play Off trophy.
Since November, the Panthers win ratio has dropped to 58%, from 81% and in contrast other teams have upped their form. Sheffield have gone from 50% to 62% and Cardiff are running away at the top with 79%. In the same period of 25 games since December 9th, Cardiff have won twenty of their games, to Panthers eight. It is nigh on impossible to see the Welsh side losing their grip at the top of the table before the end of the season and they are well on track to securing a deserved second consecutive year league win.
Scoring goals is once again a problem for Nottingham, with our highest goal scorer, Brett Perlini ranked just 46th in the league, with 13 goals and 21 assists. While we were not expecting just one outstanding goal scorer from this team which was recruited with breadth in mind, it says something that the next Panthers player in the table, only two points behind Perlini, is Yann Sauvé, a defenceman. Manchester Storm, currently third in the league, have an impressive four players in the top ten scorers (Hammond, Beca, Byers and Moffatt).
Perhaps with this in mind, Neilson brought in two new forwards this month, firstly Luke Pither, 6’2”, a 28-year-old Canadian. He had more than a point a game in the ECHL last time he played there and has 137 AHL games on his record, as well as playing in several leagues in Europe, most recently in Sweden. He is described as a “playmaker who can also finish”. He scored early in the first game he played for Panthers and his energy levels have been notably higher than others on the team in recent matches. He has secured six points from the six games he has played so far and would be good to keep around for next season.
With only nine home games left in the season. Mike Vaskivuo joined the team. He is 6’1”, aged 31 with both American and Finnish passports. He played at Dayton in the IHL and East Coast, USA and also in Denmark, Finland and most recently in France. He was recommended by Matt Francis, ex-Panthers player. Neilson stated: “This is a signing I’ve been working on and we’ve finally got over the line, the player wants to come here and we want him in the line-up”.
Defenceman Mathieu Brisebois requested to be released in February and left for “family reasons”, to help run the family business. Injuries have reared their head as usual, as they have for most teams. Jordan Kelsall, top young British player, sustained a lower body injury that unfortunately is likely to sideline him for the rest of the season. Evan Mosey and Dan Spang have also both been out of the line-up for injury reasons, the former with a suspected broken hand, which will keep him out of action for the rest of the season and his speed on ice is sorely missed.
There have been some bad beats by local rivals Sheffield Steelers in the league this season as they seem to have our number, winning six of eight games played so far. The match on Saturday 3 February in Sheffield was a close-fought one, with Panthers taking an early 3-1 lead. However, Steelers got it back to 4-all and it looked like an overtime game until Sheffield’s Mark Matheson scored in the last five seconds of the game to steal the win. That was the second time this season that Steelers have beaten Panthers in the last few seconds of a match.
Another sickening loss was at home in Nottingham to a sold out 7,000-fan arena on Saturday 10 February when the Steelers dealt out another shut out in front of a home crowd, along the lines of the two they served up over Christmas and won 4-0. Their fans regaled home fans with chants of “Where’s the Nottingham Panthers?” to an otherwise silent Motorpoint Arena.
Panthers previously had an excellent record in the Challenge Cup, winning it eight times (one preceded Neilson), but have failed to make the final for a second consecutive year. Their competitors in the semi-final this year were Belfast and the first leg was played in Nottingham on January 31st. Nottingham played a good first ten minutes of the game when there were literally no stoppages in play, but then appeared to fade away for the rest of the match. Belfast had no hesitation in capitalising with a thorough 5-1 thumping.
Patrick Galbraith unusually conceded a soft goal when he let in a clearance from the other end of the ice, which was simply batted down the ice by a Belfast player when Panthers were on a power play and it trickled through Galbraith’s legs. Panthers gave themselves a mountain to climb in the second leg, away in Belfast a week later.
However, four goals is not impossible to overcome in ice hockey and they certainly gave it their all. They took the lead on the night early with a goal from David Clarke and managed to get within one goal of Belfast on the aggregate score. However, two quick goals for the Giants finished off the glimmer of hope and the score ended at 7-6 to Belfast on the night, giving a convincing aggregate win of 12-7. The Cardiff Devils knocked out the Steelers in the other semi-final, despite the Yorkshire team holding a four-goal advantage going into their second leg. The stand-alone final will be a Welsh v Irish affair hosted at Ice Arena Wales on March 4th.
The Play Offs are the showcase weekend at the end of the season, scheduled for April 7/8 this year. The top eight teams in the league go into two-legged quarter finals to qualify for the finals weekend. As the league now has twelve teams, divided into three conferences, the conference winners will qualify for a seeding if they are not already in the top eight. This puts Panthers in a precarious position, currently sitting at seventh place in the league, although the conference winners will already qualify if the table stays as it is. Nottingham have won the play offs five times, as have the Sheffield Steelers, but have disappointingly only qualified for the finals weekend once in the last four years.
When Panthers have made the final weekend, they have gone on to win it. This is the team’s last chance to win any title this season. Neilson is at the helm until it is over, and I am sure he, players and fans alike would like his reign to finish with a celebration, not a whimper. This team have the skillset to succeed, so let’s hope that one last push will bring a final piece of silverware to the Neilson dynasty.
Nottingham Panthers website
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