SWINDON, UK – Week 8 saw Bees’ Nicky Watt remove Adam Greener from the peak of the Penalty Takers Top Ten Chart with 80 pim while team-mate Michal Pinc at number six is now the only import. In the Brit Chart James Morgan comes in for Pinc.
In the EPL Points Top Ten Chart Tony Hand still sits comfortably at the top, the big change is the entry of Wildcat Jozef Liska and Jet Darius Pliskauskas. In the Brit Chart, apart from Tony Hand and Ollie Bronnimann, only Flames players are really in touch with the imports, who are dominating the overall chart at present.
Marcus Kristoffersson now heads the Goal Scorers Top Ten Chart with Bronnimann still the only Brit and Liska making an appearance here as well while Hand has dropped out of the British Top Ten Chart.
In the Top Ten Assists Chart Hand still rules and has actually increased his lead at the top while Liska, Kristoffersson and Pavel Gomeniuk have all entered. Hand has also increased his lead at the top of the Brit Chart.
The Top D-men Chart is becoming more varied both in teams and nationality but Flames’ Paul Dixon still sits at the head of the British D-men Chart which perhaps surprisingly, apart from Ben Morgan, has nothing from the Phoenix and Jets but does include Bee Sam Waller.
Last weekend’s Steeldogs-Bison game produced a record seventeen goals beating the previous record of twelve set two weeks before by the Bees and Wildcats. Bison’s Ollie Bronnimann and Viktor Kubenko both scored hat-tricks while Ondrej Lauko claimed his second goal of the season. Coach Steve Moria said, ‘We are playing well on the road at the moment and have only had one bad period all season. We outplayed Guildford in their own building even though we lost in overtime.’ Now, such words bring to mind that grand old commentator Murray Walker, famous for his imagination in searching out ways to insert his foot into a mouth, and the dexterity in which he did so. I watch this space with interest.
The weekend saw 17-year old Luke Brittle, he of the Brother Brittle’s four, score his first goal for the Telford Tigers which must have been a touch sweeter being against brother Adam of the Lightning. Tigers coach Tom Watkins, however, lamented his depleted side’s performance: ‘We took too many silly penalties…but that comes a little from being fatigued during the game.’
On a more positive note Watkins reported long-time injured Ashley Stanton had returned to the ice for restricted training, apparently responding to surgery well and healing faster than expected. More immediately back is Andrejs Maslovskis having recovered from an eye infection along with the news Jack Watkins and Dan Scott had been selected for the GB U20 side to play in the World Championship in Belarus next month. The Tigers also made a signing with Northern Stars’ young D-man Ross Hanlon, who attended the Tigers’ open trials back in May, joining the ranks.
Bee’s boss Gareth Cox has a problem, and you can’t help but sympathise. For the second weekend his team have scored five goals – and lost! ‘It can’t keep happening,’ bemoaned Cox. ‘Scoring five goals at home is one part of what we need to do, and we are doing that. But we really need to tighten up at the other end of the ice if we are to stand a chance.’ Bee’s owner Kate Eleftherious was more upbeat when she commented: ‘It’s taken a while but I hope you can see that Coach Cox is finally getting the team to play in the style that he wants…shortly we expect to reap the rewards.’
The Steeldogs also have their problems with injuries and having recently lost Tom Squires plus newcomer Adam Radmall receiving an early injury and announced they ‘must make changes’. Coach Darlow acknowledged the problem when he commented on the weekend’s games: ‘It is my job to make sure the team understands what to do in each given situation, and clearly this was not the case.’ So, the Steeldogs are currently searching for both imports and Brits to strengthen their side.
Also miffed at the weekend defeat by the Lightning was Phantom’s Coach Curtis Cruickshank who complained some of his side were ‘acting like passengers’ and ‘suspect’. Days later Cruickshank announced the signing of a five year contract with fourteen year old Lewis Hook, who can’t even train with the big boys yet, which makes you wonder if the coach has a cunning plan the squad doesn’t know about so perhaps it is time to hide under the table, I feel.
And so on to Saturday.
While the Tigers might be propping up the league table I for one always root for the underdog because, as I have said before, without them we have no EPL as we know it. So when the Tigers opened the scoring in the third minute I uncrossed my fingers, but two quick replies and then a 4-2 to Phantoms lead meant they were crossed again. But, by half way through it was 5-5, and I was running out of things to cross and uncross until the Phantoms roared away to an 11-6 win, equalling the EPL record of seventeen goals in a game and bringing to mind Coach Cox’s dismay about scoring well at home and still losing.
And talking of underdogs, the Jets hosted the Steeldogs and went on to improve their run to six straight wins at the Sheffield side’s expense in a nine-goal game while the Phoenix went to Bracknell with a similar outcome in a ten-goal game. And while no one would be daft enough to condemn a team for winning, long-term repeated discrepancies do little for the future of the EPL.
But as they say: it never rains, but it pours. Or, as the Irish landlady of my local, the Frog and Spigot, says, ‘If you’ll be needing to lose a coin from your purse you can bet the good Lord will take the pound for His work and not the penny, even though it is Himself that can be doing the miracles.’ And so He did with the Wildcats when netminder Chris Douglas was involved in a car crash and netminder James Hadfield went down with a ‘mystery’ illness. Tom Murdy stepped up to the line from EIHL side Coventry Blaze as a temporary replacement, as he has done before, but the Flames added to the misery with six goals including a Nathan Rempel hat-trick.
The Bison, complete with Coach Steve Moria’s high hopes for a Cup placement and the curse of Murray Walker weighing heavily on his shoulders, were earthbound at 3-0 down to the Lightning by the first break, and finally crash-landed with a 5-0 shut-out. Although not relevant to the final score, what looked like a perfectly good goal by Ondrej Lauko was disallowed for no apparent reason which makes you wonder why the goal judges, for example, don’t record the activity in the crease to remove this sort of farce. I mean, we are not talking about a Disney budget here and who doesn’t have a recording device in their pocket anyway these days and enough effort to flick a switch?
With the top three teams all winning forth placed Bison slipped back a smidgeon. And with the Lightning and Phantoms staying locked on points with their wins, and the bottom four all losing things pretty much stayed the same.
Sunday’s games, however, of which there were just three pairings, should have given the Bison a chance to regain some of their lost ground, assuming the ice was sorted out which in the end it was after a delayed start, but what hard work they made of it. With fifteen minutes to go Lightning’s netminder Barry Hollyhead was stretchered off after falling awkwardly although some say he was unconscious, and then with just fifteen seconds left on the clock and 3-2 down Bison’s Steve Moria grabbed the equaliser on a power play and Lauko the winner in overtime in what was the Lightning’s first game of the season to go beyond regular time.
The Flames hosted the Steeldogs and helped themselves to a surprising first shut-out of the season at 4-0. Meanwhile the game of the evening, if not the weekend, must have been Telford’s stretching of the Phoenix in Manchester to a penalty shoot-out raising memories of their Swindon clash and proving that even the mighty can be un-mightied on occasion.
So finally, while the Flames and Phoenix appear to be edging away and the Lightning and Phantoms have split again on points. But I really don’t care because so happy am I an underdog managed to wrenched a point from an overdog I am going to buy everyone in the room a drink. That is if you can get an order to me in the next five minutes!
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Contact the author Bill.Collins@Prohockeynews.com
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