As we enter another weekend of playoff action, the TSI World Bees prepare themselves to welcome the Hull Seahawks to the Slough Ice Arena on Saturday evening for their home fixture of the weekend. Then the Bees get ready to make the trip up north to face the Hull Seahawks on the Seahawks’ home ice.
After the first weekend of playoff action had been completed both the Bees and Seahawks still find themselves chasing their first point as well as win in this series of competition. Hull are currently in 4th position just below the Bees due to the defeats against the Leeds Knights where they lost their first game away in Leeds 8-3 and then lost at home in Hull 3-6 on the Sunday evening.
Hull’s form throughout the season allowed them to finish 4th within the league standings as they were able to win 31 games, lose 20 and have 3 games go to overtime and end in a loss out of their 54 games, which left them finishing their season with 65 points. They finished their season with a 4 point weekend as they were able to beat the Solway Sharks and Leeds Knights in their final 2 fixtures.
The Seahawks’ power play throughout the 2023/24 season was 25% effective as they were able to productively use 40 out of the 160 man advantages they had received while their penalty kill had been 77.07% effective during the 54 games as they had been able to see through 158 out of 205 time where Hull had been short-handed during their games. During the time that Hull had a penalty called against them, they were able to get 7 short-handed goals to the back of the net and they were scored by Emil Svec, Finlay Ulrick, Brock Bartholomew, Sam Towner and Bobby Young . But there have been 11 short-handed goals scored against the Seahawks in the games they have completed and will be something that they will want to prevent over the weekend.
1,752 shots on goal were taken against Hull’s netminders in the 54 games and from those shots it created an average of 32 shots on goal per game for the netminder for the Seahawks to face. Whereas 2,109 shots on goal were the amount of opportunities that the Seahawks had throughout the season against teams’ netminders across the league, which then led to roughly 39 shots on goal per game for Hull. The Seahawks managed to only have 211 goals scored against them while also being able to secure 240 pucks to the back of the net.
Going into this weekend’s doubleheader, the Bees will need to look out for players like Brock Bartholomew and Owen Sobchak. Defenceman Brock Bartholomew has been a fundamental part of the Hull defence this season and has proven to be hard to get past for teams around the league and will be someone that the Bees will need to try to charge past in order to get chances throughout the games. This season he has been able to collect 23 goals and 40 assists adding up to 63 points with 7 of his goals being from power play chances as well as 14 of his assists, which shows the Bees will also need to watch out for him while the Seahawks go onto the power play as he could be dangerous from the blueline.
Lastly, forward Owen Sobchak who joined the Hull Seahawks later in the season and only played 19 games for them but during the 19 games he played he was able to secure 48 points from 19 goals and 29 assists while only facing 10 minutes worth of penalties. He has been able to get 6 pucks to the back of the net whilst the Seahawks were on the power play and also was able to score 3 game winning goals during the season. He will be somebody that the Bees will constantly need to keep an eye on as he can turn over any opportunity he gets.
