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Stingers Buzz To Hartford. |
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Cincinnati Enquirer by David Fuselier |
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12-26-1975 |
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The
Cincinnati Stingers, their momentum stalled
again, play the New England Whalers tonight for
first place in the World Hockey Association's
East Division. The two teams are currently tied
for first each with 31 points. There is nothing
new about this struggle. The standings have been
closely knotted all season. While the Stingers
have rebounded nicely from an eight game losing
streak, they keep passing up opportunities to
take command of the division. "Every time we get
a little ahead, we fall back again," notes coach
Terry Slater. "We're still playing losing hockey
(16-17-1). If we'd beat Phoenix (Tuesday), we'd
have been .500 but we never seem to do it. We
just can't reach that plateau. We get close but
then fall back."
The Cincinnatians lost to the Roadrunners 5-3
after blowing a 3-1 lead in the last half of the
last period. Slater criticizes his team's
defensive efforts. "We stopped back checking,"
he says. "It's something like that every
game. Every time we have a practice, we have to
work on something different because every game
we're doing something else wrong. Now we're back
to working on back checking. That's what we
worked on a month ago. We just run in circles."
The Stingers lately have practiced every day but
Christmas and Slater says, "We'd practice then
too except we had to be on a plan that evening
and there was no way. We're going to keep
practicing every day right through the holidays,
right through New Years." he promises. "One of
these days we're going to get everything right."
This weekend the Stingers play back to back
games against Indianapolis, another close
divisional rival. Saturday's game is in
Indianapolis. Sunday they play in Riverfront
Coliseum. |
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