In their attempt to move up from Group B to A in the IIHF's Division I, Great Britain have enlisted the help of four players from the national champion Sheffield Steelers and one from the second-placed Braehead Clan. After a pre-tournament game in Coventry, Sheffield's Ben O'Connor and Braehead's Matt Haywood looked ahead to the national team's challenge and to the CHL next season.
by Jon Rowson
COVENTRY, Great Britain – There are many players affiliated to CHL clubs who are looking forward to representing their country in Prague and Ostrava in two weeks’ time, when the puck drops for the start of the 2015 IIHF World Championship. However, further down the international hockey ladder, action is already underway, such as in Eindhoven, where the Netherlands are hosting the IIHF Division 1B World Championship. One of the six teams battling in Eindhoven are Great Britain, who got their promotion challenge underway this week with victories over Croatia and Estonia.
The Sheffield Steelers and Braehead Clan secured qualification to the 2015–16 Champions Hockey League by virtue of finishing first and second respectively in the EIHL this season. Both teams relied heavily on British talent this year, with the Steelers’ captain, Jonathan Phillips, also wearing the ‘C’ for Great Britain. The victorious Steelers, who fell short of a famous treble this season by losing in the finals of both the Challenge Cup and the EIHL playoffs, have provided four players for the British roster: forwards Robert Dowd and Jonathan Phillips and defencemen Mark Thomas and Ben O’Connor. On the other hand, Braehead forward Matt Haywood made his competitive senior debut on Monday, after earning his second international call-up following his fantastic season as part of the Clan’s title challenge.
With such a quick turnaround between the end of the EIHL season and the World Championship, the British squad could have been forgiven for having tired legs going into their two warm-up games against Poland in Nottingham on Thursday and Coventry on Friday. Poland, who gained promotion to Division 1A last year, had thousands of raucous fans attend both games. Despite the partisan atmosphere, Great Britain were victorious in both contests, edging a barnburner of a game in Nottingham by a 6–4 scoreline before shutting down the dangerous Polish offence 3–1 in Coventry a day later.
Friday’s game in Coventry was truly a war of attrition, played with the intensity of a promotion-deciding World Championship game. Poland, eager to avenge last year’s 4–2 defeat at the Division 1B World Championship in Vilnius, came out swinging, finishing every hit and putting the British defence under pressure with a ruthless forecheck.
Speaking after the game, Steelers’ defenceman Ben O’Connor said, “Last night [Thursday] they came out hard and it was a great game back and forth. Tonight they came out with a chip on their shoulder. It’s a much smaller ice surface in Coventry so they were banging bodies, hitting hard. We stayed composed, stuck to our game plan and were successful again. We’ve got to be positive with what [Head Coach Peter] Russell has brought to the team. Everyone is buying into the system, everybody wants to win and it’s showing on the ice.”
Matt Haywood, who had 23 points in 48 games for the Braehead Clan this season, was named to the World Championship roster by new Great Britain head coach Peter Russell. Speaking after Friday’s game, the Doncaster-born forward said, “Poland are a very good team; they’re in the pool above us and especially for a ‘new era’ with a couple of young guys coming in, it was great to win. Yesterday out of the six goals, four of us got their first goal, so we wanted to prove that we are good enough to play. It’s been amazing so far.”
Haywood was one of those who scored his first international goal in Thursday’s 6–4 win in Nottingham. Coach Russell turned to Haywood’s line, featuring captain Jonathan Phillips and Coventry Blaze forward Russell Cowley, to set the tone at the start of each period, to which Haywood added, “Anytime the coach says go out first, that’s what you want, you want to be in their end, you want to be fast, physical and trying to get your team going. If that’s the role we’ve got then I love it. I feel like I’ve been playing well this year; we had a good team, did well in the league and I feel like now I’m here I’ve got another job to prove that I’m good enough to be here. I’m trying my hardest every game and every shift I’m out there.”
On Friday’s game against Poland, Great Britain’s power play was the difference between the two teams. Whilst Poland failed to score with the man advantage, Britain scored three times. Steelers’ defenceman Ben O’Connor is the definition of a power play quarterback. The 26-year-old, who has spent time in Canada, France and Kazakhstan, returned to the EIHL for the first time since 2010–11 this season, scoring at almost a point-per-game clip to earn himself the EIHL’s ‘Best British Player’ award.
O’Connor, who scored a goal in a man-of-the-match performance in Coventry, spoke about his role in the GB side: “Everyone has a role on the team. Obviously mine is to bring goals to the power play and help that work. Jonathan Weaver, Colin Shields, myself and everyone who is given that responsibility is doing a fantastic job. We’ve only had two games together and to score three power-play goals is a good start.”
O’Connor is no stranger to the international game, which has included a three-year spell in Kazakhstan, where he was the Kazakh League’s top scoring defenceman two seasons running. His ability to score points from the blueline is unparalleled in Great Britain, and his importance to the national team was demonstrated in Monday’s victory over Croatia, where he scored Britain’s first goal and assisted on Mark Richardson’s overtime winner.
Due to his Kazakh League commitments, O’Connor was often unavailable for national team duty, and he acknowledged that after Friday’s game, saying, “It’s a privilege and honour to put on a GB shirt and represent your country. It was a big influence to come home, stay home and play in this country.”
On his time abroad, O’Connor also added, “It’s broadened my horizons of the game and Europe, and that type of hockey; possession hockey, tic-tac-toe as you would say, more so than the British game with its more North American style of north-south hockey, of banging bodies and finishing checks. It’s great to have both styles in my toolbox.”
This experience of the international game will prove vital for O’Connor come August, when the Steelers face off in the Champions Hockey League against some of the best Europe has to offer.
“The CHL is the best against the best”, said O’Connor. “For it to be at the start of the season is fantastic; what better training camp could you want than playing against some of the best teams in Europe? It’s exciting and I can’t wait.”
The Braehead Clan’s rise to EIHL contenders and CHL competitors has been remarkably rapid. Since their establishment in 2010, the Clan have gone from strength to strength, moving from mid-table also rans to title chasers this season. Matt Haywood has been part of the journey, taking the leap from Britain’s second tier to sign with the Clan in 2010 and the 24-year-old has played in Glasgow ever since.
“It’s been amazing,” Haywood declared. “If you look back to the first season we were getting between 600 and 800 fans on a good day, and this year from Christmas onwards we were selling out. I think we got over 3,000 fans 20 times this year. That’s amazing and a credit to the club and also credit to the fans. The fan-base has grown a lot. I think they are probably one of the best fan-bases in the league, if not the best in the league.”
This season, the Nottingham Panthers fans embraced the Champions Hockey League, filling up the National Ice Centre as they played host to, among others, the eventual CHL winners Luleå Hockey. The CHL, as well as being Europe’s premier ice hockey competition, is about uniting fans from different countries who share the love of hockey. Both Haywood and O’Connor agreed with this, with the former stating, “I think it’s more a reward for the fans than anything. They’ve stuck with us through the sticky times,” whilst the latter added, “We’ve got to take it one game at time, and whoever it may be we’re facing first we’ve just got to come out flying and give the Sheffield fans something to be proud of.”
Ben O’Connor and Matt Haywood still have a lot of hockey to play, but their efforts see Team GB sit second in the Division 1B table with five points from six. They have three more games in the space of a week as part of Great Britain’s promotion push to Division 1A, with Thursday’s game against Korea likely to be the gold medal deciding game. However, it is clear that for both O’Connor and Haywood, as well as the other Sheffield Steelers and Braehead Clan players, staff and fans, there is already considerable excitement for the 2015–16 Champions Hockey League, with both clubs proud to be representing an already proud Great Britain.