The Southern Stampede's season has not gone quite as hoped, but coach Steven Reid says there is plenty of time to turn things around.
The Stampede has won two of its six national league matches, and arrived back this week from the inaugural transtasman competition, in which it was well beaten by Melbourne (12-2) and Newcastle (11-3).
Reid said the trip was well worth it. Although the scores appeared one-sided, the Queenstown players held their own against two quality Australian sides.
"It was a great experience for them and really good to see how they run their hockey over there.
"[In] Melbourne, they play a reasonably similar game to us. Newcastle had a European sort of style. It depends a lot on the imports they have.
"It's certainly another level up. There was about five to seven minutes in each game where we got caught with our pants down and they scored near five goals against us during that time."
Reid said the Australian competition, and not necessarily the standard of hockey, was at least five years advanced on the New Zealand league.
The Melbourne rink hosts about 16,000 fans and they never struggle to "pack it out".
However, Reid is still thrilled the Stampede has had four sell-out home matches to date at the Queenstown rink, which hosts about 500.
"We're turning people away here and that's good to see the support."
Starting this weekend, with a home doubleheader against the Canterbury Red Devils, Reid wants his side to turn its season around.
Canterbury had a heavy European influence, making it a fast offensive team, Reid said.
The Stampede wanted to take the Red Devils on physically, play a simple game and "pin them down their own end".
This weekend will be goaltender Aston Brookes' first national league action since the first round, after he required knee surgery, which Reid said would be a huge boost for the team, although back-up goalie Matt Swirtz had "done a fantastic job".
"We've still got a lot of hockey to play. We've got 10 games to go and finals on top of that."
The Dunedin Thunder has the bye this weekend.
