Devils @ Giants 3rd & 4th October 2014

This weekend the Devils travel to Belfast to take on last year’s league champions (almost literally) at home in the Odyssey arena. I can’t bring myself to look at the win / lose stats for Giants V Devils games for the last few seasons as I suspect the results will be dismal at best. So only looking at this season for this one.

We’ve seen the Giants twice already this season but only in pre-Season matches where an understaffed Giants team beat the Devils 2 – 1 at home on the Saturday before making the trip to Cardiff on the Sunday where the Devils won  7- 5.

Moving on from there the Giants have played eight in the league and Challenge up notching up 5 wins and three loses.

Looking at the Giants squad it’s rather similar to last year’s league winning squad. It appears a real if it’s not broken don’t try and fix it ethos has been applied to the teams selection.

Up front we see the return of the majority of the team with Mark Garside, Evan Cheverie, Colin Shields, Kevin Saurette, Adam Keefe, Craig Peacock and Daryl Lloyd returning.

The additions upfront look to be in the most part upgrades on the players that departed from last season with Ray Sawada who has played in both the AHL and NHL (11 games) and put up good numbers, Mike Kompon who has played at a high level and consistently put up good numbers and Mark McCutcheon who has again played at AHL level and is apparently a great two way player.

On Defence we see the return of.. wait for it.. All of them from what was the best D unit in the league last season. So the Giants again have Rob Sandrock, Dave Phillips, Calvin Elfring, Cody Brookwell, Kevin Phillips  and Jeff Mason on D.

Leaving the Giants with a solid experienced unit who’ve all played together for at least a season.

Adding to the rock solid defence is the bedrock of the Giants success in recent season Stephen Murphy who  returns in nets, Murphy was of course the leagues number 1 net minder last season.

The only other change for the Giants is the departure of Paul Adey  and the return of Steve Thornton for his second spell in Belfast much to the delight of many on Belfast.

Last weekend for the Giants  saw then in action twice at home first up on Saturday where they  took the win against Coventry. Despite trailing 2-1 in the first period, the Giants got back into contention through a Ray Sawada powerplay goal and then had Jeff Mason and Mark Garside to thank for scoring the go-ahead and insurance goals respectively to secure the win.

Highlights from the Giants 4-2 win against the Blaze can be found here

http://www.belfastgiants.com/archives/highlights-stena-line-belfast-giants-4-2-coventry-blaze/

Sunday saw the Giants fall to their first home regulation defeat in an doubled up (booo) Elite League and Challenge Cup game against the Fife Flyers with a rather shocking 6- 1 drubbing from the visiting side. Catch all the goals from the game and post-match reaction from Steve Thornton here -

http://www.belfastgiants.com/archives/highlights-as-belfast-giants-fall-at-home-to-fife-flyers/

The ones to watch on the weekend for the Giants are to be frank all of them as we saw last season the entire forward group can and will score, but the leaders on scoring so far this season are.

Evan Cheverie  with 4 Goals & 10 assists
Ray Sawada with 6 Goals  & 7 assists 
Colin Shields with 4 Goals & 8 assists 
Kevin Saurette with 3 Goals  & 3 Assists

In nets the Devils face the prospect of facing Steven Murphy who’s running a 90.8% save percentage and 2.65 GAA this season, down from last season’s overall 92% with a 2.28 GAA. Yes there is a picture of Murphy not stopping a beach ball somewhere on this page but that’s merely as we find that kind of stuff amusing in a childish way..

At the time of writing I can’t spot anything on injuries for the Giants and the Devils are yet to announce if Doug Clarkson and Jesse Mychan will feature this weekend.
Face off times for the weekend are as follows.

Friday - 7pm Face off
Saturday - 7pm Face off

As always the Giants will have a web cast running although Fridays game is live on Premier sports so possibly won't be webcast. Details of the webcast can be found here https://live.belfastgiants.com//

We will be running the 'ridiculously childish and disgustingly biased' Match Night Live service for both these game, expect name calling, slurs and one eyed bias in epic proportions, at the usual location of http://www.the-inferno.co.uk/mnl

If you'd like to chip in with a comment or make a score prediction on the night you can contact us at matchnightlive@gmail.com.