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Flames top EPL after weekend wins
Photograph of Manchester's new signing Andrew Sharp in Saturday's game against Guildford copyright of Dave Steadman.
The Guildford Flames ice hockey club moved to the summit of the English Premier League table over the weekend with a 5-1 home ice win over Manchester Phoenix before registering a 7-3 success in Slough over the Jets 24 hours later.
In the weekend opener the Flames gave up the first goal of the evening for the 3rd consecutive time but, fortunately for the 1500 or so in attendance at Spectrum, it was the only one of the night for the Manchester Phoenix who ultimately went down 5-1, allowing Spectrum’s tenants to leapfrog into the league table lead. The opener came at 6:42 when Curtis Huppe one timed a Tony Hand cross ice feed past a helpless Miroslav Hala. Lukas Smital evened the score early in the 2nd period when he picked up a close rebound and slid a backhand shot past Steve Fone. At 28:28 Smital added another for the home team’s first lead of the evening. David Longstaff doubled the advantage when he netted at 32:58. In the 52nd minute, Ben Campell, in his first game back from injury, extended the lead to 3 before an unassisted marker by Joe Graham just under 4 minutes from time rounded out the scoring and the win.
The Slough Jets were looking for a 10th win in a row, a streak that pulled them to within 4 points of the league table lead, but a stop at home against the Flames, and a 7-3 defeat to Spectrum’s team, put an abrupt halt to the impressive run. Martin Masa kicked off the scoring for the visiting side at 5:53 while shorthanded before helping out on the 2-0 goal credited to Longstaff at 16:44. Nathan Rempel tripled the lead in the 28th minute before another Longstaff marker broke open a 4-0 margin at the 2nd interval. The Jets finally solved Hala when Slava Koulikov beat him on the powerplay before everyone returned to their seats from the break, but less than 2 minutes later Masa got that one back to re-instate the 4 goal lead. Stuart Potts made it 6-1 at 48:30. Michael Bowman cut the lead back exactly a minute later and Blaz Emersic pulled his side to within 3 in the 54th minute. Another Rempel goal, however, just over 2 minutes from time tied up the result.
Flames boss Paul Dixon discussed the critical weekend:
“There is a lot on the line when you play a weekend against a pair of team who are both well in the thick of the hunt for the league lead. Any time you come up against the league leaders themselves, in this case Manchester on Saturday, it makes the game that much more valuable. The first period on Saturday night was a bit disappointing in that we have talked a lot lately about our problems with allowing teams to get the upper hand on us early and yet it happened again. I didn’t think we had a poor first period, but certainly it would have been nice to have achieved our objective of either taking a scoreless game much deeper into the evening or getting the early lead ourselves. The good thing is that we got past it quickly and did a better job in the last 2 periods of forcing the play and getting traffic in front of the Phoenix net to generate some good opportunities and eventually some scoring to get a big win. On Sunday we had an extended length of time early in the first when we were down 2 men in the penalty box. We were very solid killing the penalties and then even scoring a shorthanded goal when Marty (Masa) came out of the box to bring us back to 4 skaters. Even though that happened very early in the game, it was a massive blow to Slough who probably felt like they should have had the advantage. We just continued on from there and really set the pace for the game and again got good goaltending behind a group of guys who found a way to put up numbers to secure the win and an enormous set of weekend points.”
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| 12th March 2006 19:00 | ||
5-3 |
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| 12th March 2006 19:00 | ||
4-5 |
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| 12th March 2006 19:00 | ||
1-4 |
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| 12th March 2006 19:00 | ||
4-4 |
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| 11th March 2006 19:00 | ||
2-4 |
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| 11th March 2006 19:00 | ||
| Club | GP | W | L | OL | GF | GA | Pts |
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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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| 19th March 2006 19:00 | ||
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
