With the H. Newman Reid Trophy already in the cabinet, the Sydney Bears will be looking to add a fourth Goodall Cup banner to the wall at Macquarie. We take a look at how their campaign is shaping up.

2024 Record

Overall record (23 W – 1 OTW – 1 OTL – 5 L) (0.800 PCT)

• Record against finals-bound teams (11 W – 1 OTW – 0 OTL – 4 L)

Story of the season: Have been leading the league for most of the season, but changed their coach 2/3 of the way through. Can they be the second team in two years to make a mid-season coaching change and lift the Cup?

Key stats

Figure 1: Sydney Bears Percentage – overall, and against Finals-bound teams.

The Bears’ record both overall and against finalists is impressive – with winning records against all teams besides the Brave (who won both games against the Bears in 2024).

Figure 2: Sydney Bears goal scoring – versus league average, overall and against finalists.

The major difference in performance across the whole season and against finalists has been in the scoring – which drops off 1.7 goals per games against the stronger teams. This is despite an already league-leading powerplay improving by almost 5 points (see below).

Figure 3: Sydney Bears special teams performance.

Strengths

Scoring – With 5.5 goals per game across the season, the Bears are the highest scoring team in the league. This has come from depth, with 29 different players registering a point this season, and eight of those going at better than a point per game.  

Powerplay – The Bears powerplay scores on 30.5% of chances, comfortably number one across the league.  

Third period – throughout the season, the Bears have shown they are rarely out of games, with a third period goal differential of +0.967 per game, which is the best for any team in any period.

Weaknesses

Goaltending – We are really splitting hairs here, but in recent times, the Bears’ goaltending has come off the boil, with both Downie and Kimlin posting save percentages much lower than their overall season over the past 10 Bears games – 0.885 and 0.868, respectively.  

Penalty Kill – Another recent one, but in the last 10 games, this has fallen off to 74.3% to be the third-worst in the league

When they win

Get the job done around the net. In wins, save percentage is 0.904, shooting percentage is 14.8% – in losses these fall to 0.849 and 7.2%. PK runs at 82.0% in wins, down to 65% in losses.

Player to watch

Adam Kadlec. He’s led the league in scoring, and wants to leave an impression on the biggest stage in Australian hockey.

Under the radar: Chris Eaden is the NZIHL’s all-time leading scorer, and NZ’s answer to Greg Oddy (I guess that is ‘Grig Oeddie’?) is a high-quality addition for the Bears.   

Weird stat

While the Bears special teams (especially powerplay) have been strong across the board, Melbourne holds the worst record of any venue. Powerplay has success only 13.6%, and penalty kill goes at only 72.2%

Top 10 scorers

Goalies

Projected lineup