Chelmsford weekend review

CHELMSFORD, UK – The Chieftains pulled off a slightly unexpected double winning weekend with a hard fought win on the road in Bracknell followed by a home thrashing of Peterborough Islanders. Saturday night saw the Essex side head over to Berkshire to face the Hornets, who had held the Chieftains to a 2-2 draw in the home fixture 2 weekends previous. Returning tough guy BT Williams notched a great solo goal on his return to the side following suspension. The lead was short lived as just over a minute later the Hornets had tied the game up through Ben Duggan. Chieftains net minder Andy Moffat was in scintillating form and made a huge game changing save on the 16:03 mark. His confidence had clearly rubbed off on his team mates as they became rejuvenated after this save and the Hornets heads clearly dropped as they knew that Moffat was in the type of form that makes him arguably one of the best net minders in the country. The second period started off with the puck in the Hornets net after a Hornets defenseman turned the puck into his own net thanks to a cheeky cross goal pass from Blaho Novak. Once again the Hornets didn’t give up and 94 seconds later it was back to 2-2 when former Chieftain Mark McCoy redirected a bullet of a shot past Moffat who had no answer to the redirection. It was over 7 minutes before the next goal went in but this time it went to the visitors from Essex. Aaron Connolly found a way past the otherwise impressive David Wride in the Hornets net with a shot that went straight through Wride’s legs. 5 minutes later and the game was killed off when the Chieftains made it 4-2 thanks to a blast of a shot from Sean Easton that went in at Wride’s near post. That wasn’t the end of the action though as the third period tempers began to flare and a clash at mid-ice between Novak and the Hornets’ Blair Dubyk resulted in Dubyk being cut and the referee claiming it was from Novak’s stick and under league rules Novak was given a straight match penalty, which meant he would miss the remainder of the game and the Islanders game the following night. It was a controversial call as it was claimed later that it was in fact Novak’s protective cage that had cut Dubyk who had come flying in with a huge check on the youngster. After the game Chieftains coach Dean Birrell commented “It was an improved performance, but I still feel we have a lot to do. We came here and made some mistakes but we stuck to the game plan and came away with the points. We’re going to try and appeal Blaho’s match penalty, but we’ve got to deal with calls like that and get on with it”. On the same night Chelmsford ice hockey’s second senior side the Chelmsford Warriors had a home match against the Cardiff Satans, who brought 22 players with them to the Warriors’ 14. It was a tough game and in the end the fatigue element was the key to the game as the Warriors went down 6-3, having been 3-3 at the end of the second period. The Warriors return to action in the big Essex derby on Sunday evening against the Romford Fury facing off at 6:30 in Chelmsford. Moving on to Sunday and it was a whitewash for the Chieftains as they dominated the Islanders for large parts of the game. The Chieftains were 3-0 up with goals from Danny Hammond, BT Williams and Tom Foskett before the Islanders scored their only goal of the night at 27:32. There was some controversy over the goal as the Chieftains fans and players claimed the whistle had blown prior to the puck crossing the line via Ben Clements’s glove. Clements said later “I had the puck in my hand and heard the whistle and dropped the puck over the goal line. The referee shouldn’t have given the goal as the whistle had gone. However, he did call it as a goal so I will have to be careful in future where I drop the puck”. The Islanders then lost their discipline and were regularly killing off penalties and the Chieftains were more than happy to take advantage of the extra man or men in some cases. Williams picked up his second of the night along with Connolly with 2 and the other scorers were Darren Brown, James Ayling, Ross Brears, man of the match Danny Wright and Sean Easton. After the game Birrell said “We scored a good number of goals, but on 64 shots they didn’t give us much in the way of quality shots and to be fair their net minder didn’t make things easy for us. I was pleased we kept our discipline when the Islanders began to lose theirs. We all came out of the game with no major injuries apart from a minor knock to BT but he will be back next weekend without a problem”. Looking forward to next weekend Birrell said “We’re going to go to Haringey on Sunday evening with our game plan, but it’s never easy going into away games in this league. Home advantage is always a bonus so we’re not expecting an easy game. They will be going into the game with renewed confidence after picking up a win this weekend and since the 18-1 game at our place they have strengthened so I don’t think we should take them lightly”.  Contact the author Pete.lewis@prohockeynews.com