Happy New Year and an update from Aaron Murphy

Hi Purple Army,

I wanted to firstly wish you all a Happy New Year and hope you had a fantastic festive period with family and friends.  As always, it’s been a busy time for everyone on and off the ice here as we head into the second half of the season.

I wanted to also thank each and every one of you for your continued support over the last few weeks, particularly in the recent games where the organisation has beaten the attendance record twice for games at Braehead Arena.

The passion of the fans is never a thing to be taken lightly, and we know we have the best fans in the Elite League, so it’s important to acknowledge the time and effort everyone gives to supporting this club.

Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to record any Clan Chats or Clanfidentials lately because of the time of year, the compressed nature of the schedule, and of course making sure the players and coaches get some time with their families and friends.

However, I can tell you we will be back with a couple of those next week so keep your eyes out for those when they drop.

As for the team, Jason Morgan and Jeff Battah continue to do great work as we’ve picked up some great results in the last couple of weeks, notably in Belfast, and against Dundee earlier this week.

We are still without Philippe Sanche and Mike Pelech, who are working with our fantastic medical team, and everything is being done to make sure the guys are ready to return at the right time.

Philippe has returned to Glasgow after some time at home in Montreal for a family matter.  As of now, he’s week to week and we hope he will be back sooner rather than later after what was a pretty bad injury.

Mike is on schedule and is also week to week in terms of his recovery.  He won’t be in the line-up against Sheffield Steelers this weekend, but we’ll monitor him as we go.

We had another serious flu bug rip through the team again recently, notably in the Hogmanay game at the Fife Flyers, where we had a couple of absentees.

Alex Roach, who is a pretty tough guy and Jordan Cownie, who never misses a game, both got it really bad and had to sit out that game, but luckily had recovered enough to be back in for Dundee on Wednesday.

Other players in the team and staff were also affected by it, but had varying degrees of sickness and some battled through it, much to their credit.

We have several guys playing with ongoing issues as most clubs do this time of year. They are doing all they can to stay in the lineup, and again being monitored by the medical staff, and we hope they’ll improve over time.

So now it’s all eyes on the double header against the Sheffield Steelers, and the chance to hopefully take more points from the team at the top of the Elite League standings.

To have taken three points out of a possible four from them so far is excellent from our squad, so it has set up what will be an exciting couple of games against Aaron Fox and his players, who are on a great run of form.

Beyond that, we have the Challenge Cup semi-finals to look ahead to against the Guildford Flames, which is another exciting couple of nights to come.

The Clan have never reached a major final before, and a Cup Final would be a significant achievement this early under the new ownership, and we hope you will be able to come to the first leg at Braehead Arena on Saturday 20th January.

Tickets are selling really well already, so make sure you have yours by clicking on this link.

Again, thank you for your support of the team and the organisation, and remember to keep your heads up and your sticks on the ice.