Rough Week for Hitmen

The Hitmen played 5 games in the past 8 days and only managed 1 win in those games.

Jan. 29-Rebels 5 Hitmen 3
Jan. 30-Raiders 5 Hitmen 1
Feb. 1-Ice 8 Hitmen 0
Feb. 2-Hitmen 3 Ice 1
Feb. 4-Giants 4 Hitmen 3 OT

It has been a very tough year to follow the team as they are way worse than I ever thought they would be. I expected them to finish some where from 5th to 8th in the conference but obviously that is not going to happen. Here are a couple reasons why things went so poorly.

1) The returning players have all had off years and it is quite evident that these players were great support players on a great teams the past 2 years. Here is a break down of some of the returning players stats:
Foucault 16 goals and 34 points
Fisenko 6 goals and 34 points
Sylvester 17 goals and 31 points
Bubnick 16 goals and 25 points
Fiddler 9 goals and 19 points

Those 5 were really suppose to carry the offensive attack for the Hitmen and it just hasn't happened. It is very likely that the Hitmen's leading scorer at the end of the year will fail to reach 50 points. Justin Kirsch leads the team with 36 points right now.

2) None of the 3 goalies stepped to be a true #1 goalie. Too many nights this season the goaltending has been sub par and inconsistent. Way too many weak/bad goals have been scored on Snider, Glover and Holly. Granted the Hitmen blue line is very young and really inexperienced but Michael Snider was suppose to be able to carry the load this year and has done nothing near that. This is the one area that really needs to be improved for next season. Hitmen prospect Mack Shields is having a great year in the SMHL, maybe he is the long term answer in goal.

The Hitmen are going to get a real good prospect in the upcoming bantam draft and I believe will be picking #3 in the import draft this spring as well. That player, if he reports, could be a real high impact, highly skilled kid. It would be great if the Hitmen could also get Dmitri Jaskin to come over. Two highly skilled Euros in the lineup would sure go along way in helping the Hitmen rebound.