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Cup is even heading to leg 2
Photograph copyright of Ian Snoding. On Wednesday night the Guildford Flames and Manchester Phoenix will face off at Spectrum on even terms for leg 2 of the Cup Semi-final. Leg 1 solved nothing on Saturday as the clubs traded a pair of goals each to close out the opening 60 minutes level at 2 apiece on aggregate. 24 hours later, in the club’s effort to maintain their lead at the top of the league table, a scoreless opening frame on home ice was not a good indication of things ahead. Spectrum’s favourites scored 9 goals in the final 2 periods, including 5 in the last, while handing the visiting Swindon Wildcats a 9-1 defeat. On Sunday, before most people had returned to their seats for the re-start in the 2nd, Milos Melicherik had the Flames up by 1 and Kohut doubled the lead in the 29th minute. At the period’s back end, Nathan Rempel made it a 3 goal cushion at 38:47 and seconds later Rick Plant extended that the comfort zone to 4. At 47:34 Rempel added his 2nd of the night as did Kohut not much more than a minute after that before Greg Chambers tacked on the 7th. Melicherik added yet another at 51:14 and Rempel completed his hat trick at 54:37; just 25 seconds ahead of the Wildcats only goal off the stick of Aaron Nell. “It is an exciting time to be not just hanging on to a league table lead but to also be in a semi final and working on a place in the next round. I thought the score on Saturday was a pretty good indication of 2 good sides playing an evenly matched game. From the standpoint of the result, you would always like to hold a lead moving to the 2nd game, but we will take a draw with a top club in their own rink any day. Last season we came home for leg 2 already in a 4 goal hole so we are looking forward to being ready for a game where both teams have a legitimate shot at the championship round. Now it is simply going to be which team shows up with the best effort and intensity for that full 60 minutes. Against Swindon, I think we did a great job of shifting our mindset back to the league race, which is not always an easy thing to do. We need all the points we can get to keep the pressure on some of the challenging teams, and it might have been easy to be looking at Wednesday coming up while Swindon is knocking us over. We arrived with a professional effort and we are pleased to have been rewarded with a high scoring night and a strong win.”
In the Cup semi, the travelling side from Surrey got on the board first when Jozef Kohut put them ahead less than 5 minutes away from the end of the 2nd period. James Archer levelled the game at 43:19. At 52:48 a David Longstaff goal had his side back ahead and raising hopes of a slim lead heading home, but less than a minute later the Phoenix pulled it square thanks to a Ciaran Long strike. A couple of Phoenix penalties inside the final 5 minutes put the visitors on the powerplay for much of the remainder but a solid Phoenix penalty killing effort ensured no advantage for either side to begin the closing leg.
Flames Head Coach Paul Dixon reflected on the results:
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0-3 |
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| 12th March 2006 19:00 | ||
5-3 |
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4-5 |
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1-4 |
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4-4 |
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| 11th March 2006 19:00 | ||
2-4 |
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| 11th March 2006 19:00 | ||
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5-8 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
5-1 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
4-1 |
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5-2 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
3-7 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
1-1 |
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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
| Club | GP | W | L | OL | GF | GA | Pts |
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- Campbell and Flames agree terms
- Flames re-sign David Savage
- Longstaff stays with Flames
- Flames re-sign Curtis Huppe
- Towe departs Flames
