Solent Devils faced their local rivals, Wightlink Raiders, for the fourth time so far this season (two cup, two league games), and it started with Ben Lock sitting at the side, still injured after his fall during the London Raiders game two weeks ago.
Right from the start, both sets of fans were making plenty of noise. Early on, despite the cheering, the thud of the puck hitting the glass at the side of the rink could be heard, however, the crowd were hushed for an astonished moment as Ralfs Circenis was sent to the sin bin on a delay of game penalty.
Richard Facey celebrating with Dominik Hegyi
While on the penalty kill, Mitch Murray was assisting the Devils in defence, and lay down on the ice to block a shot and ended up taking the full force of it against the side of his knee. Luckily, Murray made it off the ice under his own power, and after a few minutes off the ice managed to return to the game.
As ever when these two teams meet, this was a physical match, the fans from both teams signaling their belief that various challenges were too aggressive, that a player was tripped, or there was some other infraction occurring, however as it is up to the referees to monitor the game, the play continued uninterrupted.
At one point, Corey Watkins was attacking the Devils goal, and failed to stop in time once his shot had been saved by Christian Cole. Watkins ended up going over Cole, lay on top of the Devils net minder as he was on all fours on the ice. This cause Alex Murray to head in and make sure Cole was okay, and had a few strong words with Watkins, letting him know it is bad form to touch a net minder.
As the puck was frozen under (the now prone) Cole, it was taken out to the face-off circle to the right of the goal, and shortly after dropping it, referee Blaine Evans elicited the loudest cheer from the crowds yet, by falling over and landing squarely on his backside.
Raiders then went on the attack, with Ryan Webb taking the puck almost all the way to the goal, slipping it past Cole who was well out of his crease, to Craig Tribe. Tribe somehow miss-hit the puck from two yards out, and sent the puck wide of the goal. This gave the Devils time to get back, and prevent the Raiders getting ahead.
Jaroslav Cesky then got hold of the puck, and as he does so well for Raiders, went for the goal. Alex Murray stopped him from getting there, but was asked to leave the ice for two minutes for using his elbows.
Mitch Murray attacking Matthew Colclough
Despite being shorthanded, Richard Facey was on the attack. He was heading one on one with Matthew Colclough in the Raiders goal. Unfortunately for Facey, the Raiders defence were a bit quicker than he was and they managed to catch up with him just as he was about to shoot. Facey was taken down, quite hard, and the refs thought this deserved a penalty shot. Facey headed in hard, using his skills to try and wrong foot the keeper, however Colclough is very quick, and managed to block the shot, keeping the score 0-0.
Circenis then managed to ring the post with his shot from range, and then George Norcliffe was sent to the sin bin for interference, giving the Raiders a 5 on 3 advantage for 41 seconds.
It took 40 seconds of sending the puck round and around the Devils end, with confusion in front of goal and at least five players ending up right in front of the crease, Cesky found Webb, who in turn started the scoring for the Raiders.
Coming in to the second, the Devils were given a power play, as Ben Paynter took down Shaun Rudkin.
With the puck somehow deep in the Devils zone, Alex Murray sent it out in to neutral ice, where it was picked up by the fast moving Circenis, who used his speed to line himself up, letting the puck fly from the end of his stick from just inside the Raiders blue line, beating Colclough for the first time and tying up the game.
Steve Gosset was forced to leave the game after taking a stick to the face, which split his lip and caused him to bleed quite a lot. It seems however, no one saw who did this, so no one was sent to the sin bin for it.
Corey Watkins, however, was sent off for the Raiders just a few minutes later, for charging.
This didn’t stop the Raiders getting a second goal, and retaking the lead. Shorthanded, Alex Sampford managed to get the puck past both Christian Cole, and his brother Alex, and in to the back of the net.
The third period started well for the Raiders, sending the puck round and around the Devils zone once again, Webb and Tribe got the puck to Watkins, who slipped it over the shoulder of Cole as he dived forward to try to save it.
A few minutes later, with the puck tied up in a mass of players in the corner behind the Devils goal, the puck slipped out to the middle, where Cesky was waiting like a sniper, and with a sniper’s precision, he fired the puck with an almighty one timer straight in to the back of the net.
Just seventy seconds later, with Jordan Gregory sat out for the Raiders, the play was all in front of the Devils goal, when once again the puck ended up in the net, for which Watkins received the credit.
Devils managed to get a late goal, sending the passing all around the Raiders zone, with a pin point pass to Circenis in the middle, who mirrored Cesky’s earlier goal and smashed the puck in to the Raiders net.
Paynter was sent to the sin bin for roughing, after getting a bit physical with Monty Gailer. This resulted in some of the fans adjacent to the sin bin becoming quite vocal, however, this penalty and the high level of passion from both the Devils teams and their supporters was not enough, and the game ended 5-2 to the Raiders.
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