EPL Week 19 round up

SWINDON, UK – Monday 18^th January and Week 19 started with trouble at mill.
Just when the club needs no more problems Swindon Wildcats netminder Geoff Woolhouse, nine times winner of the Man-of-the Match award, was given his marching orders for a match penalty he received last weekend for retaliating against a late hit by Slough Jets forward Ryan Watt. He will serve two weeks’ notice but under suspension by the club pending a hearing and what will undoubtedly result in a multi-game ban.
Tuesday’s stats update show Sheffiend Scimitars’ netminder Pasi Raitanen edging into second place in the Top Ten chart by a whisker, and Ben Bowns into 6^th.
Leigh Jamieson and Grant McPherson, both from the MK Lightning, now lie in the top two places in the Penalties Received chart accounting for over 150 PiMs between them. Bracknell Bees’ Lithuanian forward Andrius Kaminskas with 130PiM is the only import near them in the overall Penalty chart.
On the overall Points Scoring chart, there are now two Brits, Tony Hand and Basingstoke Bison Nicky Chinn in the top ten, so an improvement over last week. In the Top Ten Goal Scorers chart the highest Brit, Adam Walker, is now outside at number eleven, while in the Team Totals chart the Peterborough Phantoms have jumped from number five to second place based on the total number of points scored, although Bison still lead.
Thursday and the Wildcats welcomed former netminder Chris Douglas back into the fold on a temporary contract until a permanent replacement can be found for Woolhouse. Douglas, according to local reports, had been training with the team for several weeks, so it looks like the writing was on the wall for Woolhouse anyway regardless of the match penalty which caused his dismissal.
Canadian D-man Jon Sitko, currently with the Romford Raiders, has suffered a knee injury which is likely to keep him out for at least a month, and another Raiders’ D-man, Brit Andy Munroe, announced he was leaving the club of his own choice. Twenty-four hours later the Raiders announced the signing of David Oliver from ENL Invicta Dynamos, which has caused some ill-feeling at the club for the way the Romford team approached the player directly instead of following accepted protocol. Raiders also signed Jets’ backup netminder Charlie Kaylor and should be able to offer him more ice time rather than simply having to watch in-form Gregg Rockman, currently sitting at number five in the top netminders chart.
Steve Wallace, dropped last week by Sheffield, was snapped up by the Phoenix.
 
Heading into this weekend’s matches and Guildford’s ten-game winning run came to an end with Saturday’s meeting at Basingstoke. The visitors managed to take the lead in the first few minutes and later in the game clawed a goal back from 4-2 down, but it simply wasn’t enough. The win gave Bison seven from eight and dropped the Flames to third in the table.
Manchester suffered another loss at Milton Keynes meaning they have only scored an overtime win in five games causing the top three to pull ahead slightly and the top four spread to have increased to eight points.
At the bottom, Wildcats had a penalty win against the Phantoms with new netminder Chris Doulgas saving three of four and so gaining Man-of-

the-Match recognition. Phantoms saw the return of Maris Ziedins from his long-term knee problem and the debut of new-signing Ross Dalgliesh on a two-way deal with Nottingham Panthers from the Elite League. With Romford winning at Sheffield and both clubs having made recent changes at both personnel and coaching level, it will be interesting to see if their fortunes are about to change, but Claude Dumas, boss at second bottom Bracknell, says he is struggling to find two suitable signings before the end-of-the-month deadline, which draws perilously closer.
Sunday and the Phantoms injury woes continued with netminder Stephen Wall picking up a back injury late in the game at Slough. Still out were Doug MacIver, Julian Smith, James Ferrara, Tom Carlon and Callum Fowler and with Maris Ziedins icing but far from in perfect health and the extra burden of a ten-minute misconduct call on James Morgan and a game misconduct on Warren Tait, it was hardly surprising their eight-game points scoring run fell foul of the in-form Jets.
Sheffield’s win against the Raiders means they are now tying with the Phantoms in sixth place on 35 points. The Flames had what has become a rare weekend suffering two losses, and even home advantage couldn’t help them overcome top placed Lightning. Phoenix are back in the points with a drubbing of the Wildcats, although they did manage to concede the first goal and new netminder Chris Douglas picked up his second Man-of-the Match award of the weekend.
The weekend’s games concluded leaving the top four still separated by eight points, but with top-placed Milton Keynes pulling away with a four point buffer.
Can’t wait to see what next weekend brings! Contact the author Bill.Collins@Prohockeynews.com