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EIHL: Historic clash between Flyers and Panthers

Panthers Scaled, British Ice Hockey

Nottingham Panthers and Fife Flyers face each other on Sunday as two of the oldest institutes in British ice hockey go head-to-head.

Founded in 1938 Fife Flyers are the oldest professional ice hockey club in the UK.

Although ice hockey in Britain has dated back to the 1870s there were no professional sides.

Fife was the first properly ran and funded professional club and they joined the EIHL in 2011.

Founded a few years later in 1946 in post-war Britain the Panthers have a similar story to Fife.

A league disbandment forced the club to cease operations for a while.

A group of players and officials from Sheffield Lancers then reformed the club in the 1980s.

Since then they have become one of the biggest clubs in the British ice hockey scene gathering a large fanbase.

The two sides have played 53 times across various competitions, 44 of these have come in the EIHL.

In this time the Panthers have won 28 games and Fife won the other 16, making for a clear advantage.

There has only been one draw between the two sides which came in the Elite League play-offs.

We won’t be seeing that result this weekend however as this game will have a winner.

Fife do sit bottom of the table 6 points behind the Panthers, they have a game in hand on Nottingham though.

Both teams have struggled for form of late with the Panthers yet to win a game in the New Year.

Fife won their last game against Dundee Stars but before that were on a five-game losing streak.

Of these last five losses one came to Nottingham and their last win before the losing streak was a victory over the Panthers.

With Tim Wallace recently being fired as Nottingham Head Coach the Flyers could be looking to snatch two points from the game.

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