Chieftains hit back to sting the Hornets

CHELMSFORD, UK – Head Coach Dean Birrell was delighted with the team’s performance tonight as they defeated in-form Bracknell Hornets 3-0 at the Riverside. “If you had said to me before the game it would be 3-0, I’d have bitten your hand off! We knew we would be in for a tough game and the scoreline doesn’t really reflect how hard we had to work to get the win. David Wride in the Hornets net saved a lot of shots tonight that a lesser goaltender wouldn’t have. He really did keep it to 3-0”. The Chieftains were pegged back for the first 2 periods with both Wride and Ben Clements in the Chieftains goal keeping everything at bay. Ben Duggan and Reece Covington had words after Craig Tribe had slashed at Clements after Clements had made a good save. Referee Blaine Evans sent both on a 2 minute roughing penalty for the incident. As things moved into the third period it looked like the fans would see a rare 0-0 scoreline, but it wasn’t to be thanks to the deadly duo of Ross Brears and Aaron Connolly who teamed up on both goals to make the score 2-0 to the home side with just over 10minutes to go. This seemed to fire up the Hornets even more and things were getting intense and almost no-one left the game early as it really was on tenterhooks. That was until the last minute of the game when the Hornets coach pulled Wride for an extra skater to push for a point, but it left the goal exposed and 3 Chieftains broke out the zone together, almost doing the “Flying V” formation down the ice and it was left to solid defenceman Danny Wright to slot the puck home into the empty net.

That wasn’t the end of hostilities though as there was still time for Brad Watchorn and Covington to lose their gloves and helmets and have a fight at centre ice. It had been brewing since the last time the two met and a similar result occurred with both falling to the ice with neither convincingly winning. The first fall went with Watchorn on top and the second time with Covington on top. The partisan home crowd were clearly behind local boy Covington, but most hockey fight fans would say it was a draw. Both Wride and Clements got the plaudits after the game and picked up the man of the match awards, much to the agreement of coach Birrell. “Ben had an excellent game for us tonight, but that’s not taking anything away from the defence who all put in a good effort tonight. We’ve received a lot of criticism in recent weeks, some of it very unjust, and I’d like to think that some of the ‘coaches in the stands’ will have seen tonight that we are capable of beating the top-end sides. It was a great all round team performance and it would be wrong to single out any player for special praise because they all deserve it. Hopefully this is the start of better things to come in the coming weeks”The Chieftains are at home again on Sunday at the midway point of their “6 in a row” home series when they take on MK Thunder. Birrell was complimentary about the Thunder who are battling at the wrong end of the table “We’ll not be underestimating the Thunder at all. The last time we went up against them, they pegged us right back when we were looking to run away with the game. They have to get points to avoid the relegation play-off and they’ll be confident of getting something from us. It’s down to us to make sure that doesn’t happen and that we turn the victory over the Hornets into a good run heading into the play-offs. We have to match them and concentrate on our own game to make sure that we don’t slip up against them. They are a hard working side and we’ll be on our guard for sure. The basis for a good side is there at MK, but for some reason they aren’t quite able to finish teams off and seem to run out of steam late in games. I enjoy our games against MK as they are a side that play the game in the right spirit – hard but fair”. Face off is Sunday night at the Riverside at 6:30pm. Contact the author Pete.Lewis@Prohockeynews.co.uk