Repeating as champions is often more difficult than winning a title in the first place.
That’s the hard truth currently facing the Dubai Mighty Camels, who’ve limped out of the gates this season in their defence of the Emirates Hockey League (EHL) crown.
After finishing atop the EHL standings last year with a 10-2 record, the Mighty Camels have managed just a 1-3 start through their first four games, with their lone win just having come recently on Monday.
As a result, they’re currently tied at the bottom of the table with the Abu Dhabi Storms on three points. Granted, the Mighty Camels have played the fewest amount of games in the league so far, but they’ve been a far cry from the dominant squad that had a massive plus-45 goal differential last season.
So, what’s changed?
“If we could pinpoint what it is, we’d have figured it out by now,” said forward Ross MacMillan, whose third-period goal in the championship last year proved to be the winner. “Maybe celebrating too much in the summer.”
Semen Popikhin, who played on the Mighty Camels’ title-winning team before switching to the Dubai White Bears for this season, said: “They play the same like last year, hard Canadian hockey. It’s tough to tell.”
The notion that hard work beats talent can be applied to many sports, but it rings particularly true in ice hockey and even more so in a competitive league that features ex-professionals and players whose fitness levels can vary.
Hard work and effort, or lack thereof, have been the biggest factors to the Mighty Camels’ slow start in the eyes of long-time captain Ron Murphy.
“It was definitely a championship hangover for the first couple games,” said the 42-year-old who’s been with the team for 17 years, including all seven in the EHL.
“We also lost a couple guys, but we gained a couple guys as well so I don’t think it’s a result of losing players so much as I think it was a bit of a hangover and thinking we were going to win without really putting any effort it. It opened our eyes a lot.
“We started off very slow. I think after winning last year, we thought we could come in and not really put the effort in there to win games and just rely on our talent to win games. But you need to work hard and we just didn’t for the first couple games.
Popikhin, who now has the outside-looking-in perspective, believes there’s more to the Mighty Camels’ struggles than their own issues.
“Other teams know they are the champions and everybody wants to win against the champions,” he said. “So they make a huge effort in every game, they play extra hard against them.”
Looking at what the Mighty Camels have faced so far, it’s hard to disagree. Both double-digit goal games in the EHL this season have come against the Mighty Camels, with the Dubai Vipers hanging 11 on them in their opener and the White Bears going one better with 12 in the next contest.
Since then though, the Mighty Camels have steadily improved to lose 7-3 to the White Bears last Saturday before earning their first victory since the championship in a 6-3 defeat of the Vipers on Monday.
“Tonight was great. The guys played hard and we got the first win, so yeah the monkey is definitely off our back,” said Murphy after the win. “It’s a good feeling.
“We kind of regrouped, had a couple of good practices and you know, we came out tonight relaxed and it turned out alright.”
The Mighty Camels still have 10 games left in the regular season, so there’s plenty of time for them to dig out of their hole, but they now know what it’ll take to remain at the top.
