Wildcats week 19 round up

SWINDON, UK – Week 19 kicked off with more problems for the club, which it can well do without at the moment, as Geoff Woolhouse, nine times winner of the Man-of-the Match award, was given his marching orders for the match penalty sending off he was given last night after retaliating to a late hit by Jets’ Ryan WATT. Apparently he will serve two-weeks notice, but it will be under suspension by the club, pending a hearing and what will undoubtedly be a multi-game ban. Coach Ryan Aldridge, currently serving an eight-game ban himself, stated he felt Woolhouse’s action and the subsequent ban would seriously jeopardise the Wildcats chance of reaching the playoffs, so sounds like something else is afoot.
Tuesday, and in the updated club stats for last week Jozef Kohut and Aaron Nell, who were sharing the top goal scorers spot, went their separate ways as Nell pulled away again by two goals. Perhaps unsurprisingly Ryan Aldridge still leads as top penalty receiver with 96PiM despite his long absence, although Joe Baird is hot on his skates with 86PiM. The big number this week is, of course, the match penalty against Geoff Woolhouse, the fourth such penalty so far this season meted out to the team, and interestingly all having occurred during second periods, the segment of a game which records by far the most penalties. Jan Krajicek now leads assist scoring with twenty-one points, but Kohut is still out on his own with total points scoring at 39, a position he has held all season. With two more games where the Wildcats were outshot, the Basingstoke game set a new record for the most number of shots on Woolhouse at fifty-nine, bringing the outshot total to 25, leaving just ten games where opponents have been outshot.
At the end of the week Chris Douglas, the former Wildcats netminder, re-signed as a temporary replacement for Woolhouse until a permanent successor can be found. Apparently, Douglas has been training with the team for weeks but has not played in the EPL for a year since his spell with the Bees ended, so he arrives directly from a layoff.
Into the weekend and at home to the Phantoms and an eighth game that went beyond regular time, this time won on penalties with new netminder Chris Douglas undergoing a baptism of fire and gaining the Man-of-the-Match award. Although dropping a goal down in the first minutes, the Wildcats recovered quickly and, later, again came back from a two-goal deficit to force the game into overtime and then the penalty shoot-out, where an Aaron Nell goal clinched the match.
Overtime games are split right down the middle with four wins and four losses both divided equally into shoot-outs and overtime. Nell scored a wonderful three goals, although the record for a single game stands at four with Jozef Kohut in the fifth game against Romford.
Sunday saw another visit to Manchester notable only really for the first goal being scored by the Wildcats and in particular Nell, with the second by Jason Cassells who is having a good run at the moment, and Man-of-the-Match went to Chris Douglas, who seems set on making the same impression Geoff Woolhouse did in that department.
Next week could see the return of player-coach Ryan Aldridge, unless his retirement from the ice kicks in, and the first games where he should be on the bench with new assistant coach, Simon Anderson.
Contact the author Bill.Collins@Prohockeynews.com