IAfter a slightly delayed start to the game, Solent Devils and Invicta Dynamos stepped out on to the ice for this mid-table match up.
From the start, both teams were skating hard, with physical challenges and aggressive attacking in both directions.
The referees on the night, decided they wanted to let the teams know early that they wanted to stay in control, which is why within the first two minutes Steve Gosset found himself on the way to the sin-bin after a face off, where it was viewed his attempts to get the puck were slashing more than anything else.
Having a man off the ice, didn’t seem to dampen the Devils spirits and they continued their solid attacking, with George Norcliffe in particular seeming to take up every position on the ice.
Half way through the first, Devils head coach, Alex Murray, had an incident and mishandled the puck, and in a frantic scramble to get back and prevent Invictia going one on one with Christian Cole in the Devils goal, his stick went a bit high, for which he was given a two minutes penalty. This simply meant he could stand in the sin-bin, shouting instructions to the rest of the team, and calling for line changes.
It didn’t take much longer for the first Invicta player to get pulled up by the refs, and when Connor Redmond tackled Devils captain, Alex Cole, hard against the boards, he was given two minutes for boarding.
This gave the Devils the chance they needed, and while moving the puck around the Invicta zone, Alex Murray had a huge shot from just inside the blue line, which was deflected back out, where Ben Lock was waiting patiently, and his one timer put the puck under Invicta net minder, Damien King’s arm and in to the back of the net, putting the Devils up 1-0.
Coming back after the first break, the intensity of the game was stepped up, and Invicta were pulling out all the stops to even the score. At one point, during an all-out attack by Invicta, there was some confusion in the goal mouth, and a penalty was given to each team, Christian Cole for the Devils, and Steve Osman for Invicta, both for high sticks.
Photos are courtesy tombarnettphotography.co.uk
Canadian import, Richard Brown sat the penalty for Devils net minder, Cole, and during this time Cole pulled off a magnificent save. While down on the ice, on his back from diving to block a shot, the rebound was picked up and fired towards the top corner of the net, with a monumental effort, Cole managed to get his leg up high, and again managed to prevent the visitors from levelling the score.
Unfortunately for the Devils, under this kind of pressure something was going to slip in to the net eventually, and with all the players deep in the Devils zone, Arran Strawson with an assist from Osman finally managed to beat Cole, and tie the game.
Not letting up on the pressure, Invicta managed to pull in to the lead four minutes later. Sending the puck round the Devils zone, Josh Condren and Ondrej Zosiak with some fantastic passing got the puck out to Redmond, who got his second goal of the season.
Shortly after this, there seemed to be some words between Condren and Gosset, to which Gosset took offence and let his feelings known by putting Condren on the ice, under a flurry of blows, although, rather sportingly, when Condren was down Gosset stopped and, quite civilly made his way to the sin bin to sit and calm down for two minutes.
Richard Facey, who had already been solid throughout the game, clearly wanted the acclaim of getting a short-handed goal, unfortunately, he just couldn’t manage it this evening, but kept the Invicta defence tied up for quite some time while almost single headedly giving the Devils enough time to get their breath back after what had only been half the game so far.
Norcliffe was given two minutes for apparently slashing, and while he was off the ice, Alex Cole was sent to join him on a holding call, giving Invicta a 5 on 3 advantage for 18 seconds.
Alex Murray was clearly displeased with this, and before play resumed he was given a ten minute misconduct penalty, and sent to join the other two Devils already in the sin bin.
Photos are courtesy tombarnettphotography.co.uk
Devils managed to kill off the penalties, and headed to the break with the score remaining at 2-1.
Coming back out, Mitch Murray tackled Jarvis Mewett hard against the boards, and the refs felt it was too much, so the younger Murray brother was sent off for two minutes on a boarding call.
Seconds after getting back to full strength, the puck was brought out of the Devils zone after an offside call. Mason Wild received the puck and sent it across, and up the ice where Facey picked it up and finally got the goal he had been searching for all night, bring the score level again at 2-2.
There were more words on the ice, again with Gosset, and this time Jack Lee, first swinging sticks at each other, then dropping them to use fists. This finished with Gosset coming out on top again, and both players getting two minutes for slashing plus two for roughing.
Despite a wildly exciting final five minutes of the game, where the action went end to end, neither team managed to get one over the other, and as the final buzzer went the score remained 2-2.
Devils next match, is Sunday 8th November against Wightlink Raiders at Gosport Ice Arena.
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