The Whitley Warriors won their Fourth straight game against the Blackburn Hawks last night [Sunday], in a game that had just about everything.
There was a worry that the over-officiating from the referee would spoil the game as a contest as some questionable calls left the Hawks constantly on the penalty kill and allowed a rampant Warriors team to race into a 5-0 lead.
The Hawks, received their first penalty just 25 seconds into the game, and 12 seconds later the Warriors got their first goal when Shaun Kippin converted a pass from Andre Payette, following good work from David Longstaff.
The Warriors top line then did much of the damage as Callum Watson first set up Dean Holland and then DJ Good to give the home side a 3-0 lead by 11:34. That soon became five when goals either side of the first intermission from Ben Richards on the powerplay and then Watson just 32 seconds after the re-start gave the Warriors a match-winning lead.
However, the game turned on its head at 34:29 when Aaron Davies, who made a specialty out of scoring against Whitley last season, pulled a goal back for the Hawks. Immediately following that, Hawks’ youngster Corey Stones, who was making his first appearance for the side, tried, not for the first time to antagonise the Warriors’ veteran enforcer Andre Payette. Both received minor’s for roughing, and whilst both were in the box, we had more talking points to contend with.
Reece Cairney-Witter, had already slammed Shaun Kippin into the boards, much to the Whitley Forwards’ anger, but at the 36:13 mark, he reacted to something Andre Payette said to him from the box as he skated past. The Hawks defenseman earned himself a 10 minute misconduct for his efforts, but once in the box decided to bulldoze his way past several people in the time-keeping bench to try to get at Payette.
The Canadian import found it all hilarious and as Cairney-Witter was dragged away by the officials, waved him off, as his work was done.
As mentioned before, Stones had been trying to provoke Payette on a number of occasions during the game. But as the pair left the box, the crowd started counting down, and suddenly the gloves were off. Nobody really gave Stones much of a chance against experienced fighter Payette, but the Hawks forward was able to shake off a couple of hard hits to the face before responding with some punches of his own. Payette lost his balance and slipped over but before the officials could step in to break up the contest, Stones helped his opponent back to his feet to continue the battle, landing a few extra cheeky blows as he did so. Payette, soon was swinging again as the pair exchanged further blows before the big Canadian ended the fight by bringing Stones down. Both received 4 minutes in penalties but Payette was forced to leave the game after sustaining a hand injury during the fight.
The Hawks, despite being second best in the game up to that point, grew in confidence, knowing Payette was out, while other enforcers and fan favourites Jordan Barnes and Alan Yarrow were also missing. That allowed the Hawks to gradually haul themselves back into the game.
Four unanswered goals saw the visitors get to within one goal of the Warriors. Rick Bentham scored just over a minute before the second intermission, and then Mikko Sierman scored soon after the re-start. Chris Butler then netted a rare goal at 46:53 to bring his side well and truly back into the contest.
The momentum was well and truly with Blackburn now, but with 10 minutes remaining Dean Holland finished from close range after some great work by Liam Smedley, that looked to have done enough to kill off the Hawks, but no. Back they came again with two quick goals of their own. First Aaron Davies scored his second unassisted goal of the night to get the score to within one again, before Blackburn’s talisman, Rick Bentham, celebrated wildly after tying the game with just 62 seconds remaining. His joy soon turned to despair as with 13 seconds on the clock the Warriors were awarded a contentious penalty shot.
The puck entered the crease and found its way behind Hawks’ goalie, Stuart Ashton. Sensing the danger, Ollie Lomax quickly dived in front of the net and passed the puck with his hand, underneath Ashton to cover it up. After some confusion the referee, awarded a penalty shot to the Warriors. Up stepped Dean Holland, who had another remarkable game for his side, to hit what turned out to be the game’s winning goal.
With emotions running high, Bentham was outraged, and earned himself a penalty. As he left the ice he kicked the penalty box door several times, almost slipping over in the process, before smashing his stick against the rink office window and attacking anything that came his way.
Chris Butler soon followed him with a misconduct call of his own.
With everything that went against the Hawks in this game, they had done remarkably well to even be able to drag themselves back level in a game that looked lost by the end of the opening period. No one would have blamed them for being dejected, and with just moments left in the game, of saying we’ve had enough and simply giving up. But with 5 seconds to go, they got a faceoff just to Warrior’s goalie, Jordan Boyle’s right. From the faceoff a shot went towards Boyle but the puck somehow crept past him and was heading over the line, before his cat-like reactions, saw him reach behind him to grab the puck and stop it just millimetres from crossing the line with only 1.1 seconds left on the clock.
Boyle’s heroics saved the teams from entering a 3-on-3 overtime and possibly penalty shots, but there were some inside the rink that would have loved that. With everything that game had to offer who wouldn’t have wanted an extra 5 minutes of action?
* Joining me in the commentary box for the second game in a row was regular Hawks commentator Bryan Shuttleworth.
* Referee Steve Brown was being assessed during this game and that was the reason he gave for calling so many penalties. The Warriors received 32 minutes in penalties while the Hawks got an astonishing 112 minutes which included Seven misconduct calls. Some were quite simply absurd, with Ollie Lomax receiving 10 minutes for asking why the referee had given him an already questionable holding call. He tried to remind the official that he is the Hawks captain by pointing to the giant ‘C’ on his jersey but the referee was having none of it and sent him into the box anyway.
* With the Hawks spending so much time on the penalty kill during the game, it was impressive that they only gave up 2 powerplay goals. Much of that was down to their Finnish Center, Mikko Sierman, who very cleverly used his technical knowledge gained from his years with KooKoo Kouvola in the Finnish Second Division [Mestis]. Sierman was closing off lanes and shutting down shooting and passing options on the Warriors players on the point. And for me, probably should have got his side's Man-of-the-Match.
* Talking of Finns, I had a number of friends tuning in from Lahti, Finland. With the way the scheduling works in the SM liiga, it means there are no games played on a Sunday or Monday, meaning fans of Pelicans Lahti needing a hockey fix can tune in to NIHL Radio.
No comments:
Post a Comment