LONDON, UK – NIHL fans were looking forward to an action packed festive weekend of hockey, but the South of England’s worst nightmare decided to wreak havoc. No it wasn’t a Sun on Sunday promotion of free chips and gravy but a few centimetres of the white stuff, nope wrong again… we are talking snow!
Tigers disrupt the Hive (Kev Slyfield)
Worrying news came out of Basingstoke during the week as the local paper ran a front page speculating on the future viability of the town’s rink. There have long been complaints about the state of the rink and indeed one stand is out of action for Bison games this season. A picture of a crumbling wall from inside the facility was subsequently posted on The Hockey Forum that would make any Bison (or indeed UK hockey fan) gulp.
Fingers crossed that a new facility is in the offing as the signs look less than encouraging which is a real blow to a town with a solid hockey history. In contrast new images emerged of the soon to be open Romford ice rink. The future home of the Raiders looks very similar to the rink at Streatham, and will be a welcome addition to the stock of ice facilities inside the M25.
New shiny Romford rink
With the newly refurbished Lee Valley, still decent Alexandra Palace and modern Streatham rink all providing nice homes for hockey teams, the addition of Romford will give London its best standard of rinks for quite some time. That’s not to mention the recently refurbished Sobell Centre and Queensway rink down at Bayswater.
The much anticipated Peterborough Phantoms 2018 calendar was advertised this week along with bespoke Phantoms wrapping paper. Unless we have missed an update, not one NIHL team has released a branded snow globe as yet, which is quite frankly abysmal marketing from all concerned.
A number of the Invicta Dynamos squad offered some respite to weary shoppers as they showed up at the Bluewater Christmas ice rink for a meet and greet on Tuesday. A number of kids tried their hand at hockey and had a great time on the ice overseen by fashion conscious Bluewater regular, Mo’s Coach Kev Parrish. In fact the Mo’s were so popular with shoppers that they were invited back again and will be there this coming Tuesday.
Bluewater Mos
In other Dynamos news, they snapped up former London Raiders blue liner Ross Connolly to boost their back line and also released highlights of their win over Cardiff Fire. You can view them here.
A number of NIHL Britton Conference players plus Peterborough Coach Slava Koulikov and Swindon Coach Aaron Nell headed north to Dumfries for the IIHF World Championships.
Basingstoke’s Josh Smith was the lucky reserve to be called up at the last minute due to an injury withdrawal of Northern wonder kid Kieran Brown. The GB u20’s had a warm up game on Thursday night and beat Korea 5-2 with Swindon’s Jordan Kelsall on target. Cardiff’s Jordan Lawday was between the pipes and celebrated an impressive week, in which he was awarded NIHL Britton Conference Player of the Month for November.
GB warm up against Korea (IHUK)
EIHA Media mogul Craig Simpson uploaded pictures on Social Media of his official IHUK jacket and interior of his Dumfries hotel room that looked suspiciously like the Linton Travel Tavern. Sadly Craig made no reference to the size of the plates at breakfast or indeed the texture of the mousse on the dessert menu. On a serious note Craig is doing an excellent job with the updates for the tournament so keep an eye on the IHUK website for updates this week (on the hockey not the hotel).
Banners on the Wall released their latest podcast with host Anthony Russell taking time out from tweeting about wrestling and the toils of parenting to deliver his audio opinion on the latest hockey news. Listen to it here.
Saturday action review
The 482 Days media team pulled out of their live game coverage early in the afternoon with the classic post-Christmas party excuse… ‘a cold’. In fact they had been allegedly spotted at the Coca Cola truck tour in Birmingham around noon, wrestling free cans of Coke from small children (some on crutches) and downing the fizzy stuff faster than lost nomads in the Gobi desert.
The ever popular live 482 days tweets instead came from their home studio as they streamed Bracknell Bees v Telford Tigers in between burping and trying to contain hiccups.
Raiders v RedHawks (John Scott)
The Bees poor run of form continued as the Tigers beat them 4-3 in a Cup game that pretty much guarantees the Shropshire side a quarter final berth. Scott McKenzie continued his good form with a hat trick for Tom Watkin’s team, and Captain Jason Silverthorn got the other goal. For the Bees it was Frantisek Bakrlik with a brace, plus a lone goal for Alex Barker.
Silverthorn also dropped the gloves with Bees Josh Martin to add to the talking points.
London Raiders gained a morale boosting 3-2 home win over Streatham to end the RedHawks unbeaten run and take the spoils in the capital derby game.
The Lee Valley ice pad had sufficiently recovered after the drama of the previous weekend and the Raiders celebrated with the win thanks to goals from Marek Nahlik, Juraj Huska and Brandon Ayliffe. Streatham scorers were Adam Carr and Michael Farn. The RedHawks also saw Adam Wood ejected on a high sticks call in the first period, and there was a fight as Aidan Doughty dropped the gloves with Callum Wells.
Cardiff Fire suffered the full wrath of the Swindon Wildcats as the Wiltshire side thumped them 15-1 in an ill-tempered encounter at the Link Centre. It was point night for the Cats as Max Birbraer notched a hat trick and there were braces for Joe Hazeldine, Phil Hill, Floyd Taylor and Jan Kostal. Lone goals from Neil Liddiard, Toms Rutkis, Chris Jones and Harvey Robson completed the rout. The Fire’s consolation came from Michael Stratford.
It was ironic that Rutkis lined up in a Wildcats jersey against the Fire, given he now plays for the Cardiff Devils Elite team full time and perhaps Mark Cuddihy should have an ‘Adam Banks’ style conversation with Todd Kelman to get that two way deal working to the Fire’s advantage.
Two goal Kostal (Kat Medcroft)
There were a number of fights during the game with Sam Bullas taking on David Sadler, Harvey Robson going after Tamas Elias and Chris Jones fighting David Christian. Amateur footage also showed a classic glove throw across the penalty boxes from an unidentified Fire player, which did raise a smile in PHN HQ.
After the game Wildcats stand-in coach Ryan Aldridge made a less than complimentary comment about the Cardiff team in a post game interview, to which Fire Coach Mark Cuddihy responded angrily on Social Media.
The short-benched Basingstoke Bison took advantage of the absence of Slava Koulikov on the Phantoms bench to inflict a surprise 6-2 win on Peterborough in Hampshire.
Aaron Connolly scored two for the Bison with their other goals coming from Stuart Mogg, Grant Rounding, Dan Scott and Ryan Sutton. For the Phantoms it was Darius Pliskauskas and Leigh Jamieson with the goals.
The result means that the Bison top the group and the Autumn Cup semi-finals line up as Bison v Hull Pirates and Swindon v Peterborough. There will be no bag of celebratory golden leaves for the Sheffield Steeldogs or Telford Tigers who both finished bottom of their respective round-robin groups.
Sunday action review
Snow gave the NIHL schedule a good kicking with three of the four Sunday fixtures called off.
Swindon’s bus company refused to take them to Invicta, London Raiders opted not to travel to Peterborough on safety grounds and Telford ice rink closed early thus cancelling the Tigers game against Bracknell Bees.
As a result the fixtures will be a little more crowded in 2018 and if we have any more weather issues there might even be some dreaded midweek re-schedules!
Bison on their sleigh to Streatham
The one game that did go ahead was in tropical South London as Streatham hosted Basingstoke Bison with the latter aiming to get revenge following a 2-0 home loss to the RedHawks the previous week.
The Bison got off to a great start and took an early 3-0 lead through Aaron Connolly, Tomas Karpov and Hallam Wilson. Streatham pulled back level through Jamie Hayes and an Alex Sampford brace to set up a thrilling final period.
The Bison pulled away again in the final twenty thanks to an early goal from the restart and took the win 7-4 with Connolly completing his hat trick and both Paul Petts and Grant Rounding getting one each. Adam Carr scored Streatham’s fourth.
Results
Saturday 9 December 2017
Swindon Wildcats 15 Cardiff Fire 1
London Raiders 3 Streatham IHC 2
Bracknell Bees 3 Telford Tigers 4 (National Cup)
Basingstoke Bison 6 Peterborough Phantoms 2 (Autumn Cup)
Sunday 10 December 2017
Streatham IHC 4 Basingstoke Bison 7
Telford Tigers v Bracknell Bees – postponed
Peterborough Phantoms v London Raiders – postponed
Invicta Dynamos v Swindon Wildcats – postponed
Contact the author: david.carr@prohockeynews.com
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