2024 has hardly gone all the Brave’s way after a club-record losing streak earlier in the season. But, from then on, they have shown how strong a team they are – and come into the Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL) Finals as the form team.

2024 Record

Overall record (15 W – 1 OTW – 3 OTL – 11 L) (0.556 PCT)

• Record against finals-bound teams (4 W – 0 OTW – 3 OTL – 9 L)

Story of the season: Struggled early with player availability, but the form team of the league

Figure 1: Canberra Brave Percentage – overall, and against Finals-bound teams.

Canberra’s record overall versus their record against finalists shows the starkest difference in the league – picking up 55.6% of points overall, but only 31.3% of those against finalists. That is skewed a bit, with nine of the first ten games, while player availability was a challenge, against eventual finalists.

Figure 2: Canberra Brave goal scoring – versus league average, overall and against finalists.

Consistent with the struggles above, the Brave have scored considerably less, and allowed considerably more goals against finalists. This carries through into weaker special teams performance as well.

Figure 3: Canberra Brave special teams performance.

Strengths

Form – The Brave have the best record of teams over the past 10 games (9W – 0OTW – 1OTL – 0L). This success has been built on the highest scoring (5.5 goals per game), stingiest defence (2.4 goals per game allowed), best powerplay (24.3%), second-best penalty kill (81.6%) and the second-best save percentage (both goalies going over 0.900).

Discipline – unusually for the Brave, they have the second-lowest PIMs per game with 9.9 (behind only the Adrenaline).

Local scoring – Canberra have the lowest share of points from imports in the league with 28.2% of their points being provided by imports. In part, this is related to late-arriving imports, but the strong local contingent of Jake Ratcliffe, the Kubaras, Jacob Carey, Tommy Steven and Kai Miettinen have put up the numbers in 2024.

Weaknesses

First 10 games of the season – the Brave went 1-9 to open the season, and have been playing catch-up ever since.

Import scoring – averaging ‘only’ 1.3 points per game, the Brave imports overall haven’t put up the numbers we are used to from the team.

When they win

Defensively strong – they keep teams under 30 shots in wins (average 28.2 shots against in wins, versus 35.7 in losses). Special teams step up as well – powerplay jumps from 11.1% in losses to 27.1% in wins, and the penalty kill improves from 71.4% to 85.5%. As with other teams, the PDO rises too – shooting efficiency jumps from 6.2% to 15.4% in wins.

Player to watch

Austin Cangelosi. Since arriving in Canberra, Cangelosi has shown his class and skill, putting up 2.4 points per game in a team that struggled early shows how big a threat he is.

Under the radar: Jacob Carey is in his first AIHL season since crossing the ditch, and with double-digit goals and assists, has been an important acquisition and will be a threat this weekend. 

Weird stat

Aleksi Toivonen’s 0.973 second period save percentage leads the league for goalies with more than two second periods played in 2024. He has only allowed two goals on 75 shots against in that period.

Top 10 scorers

Goalies

Projected lineup