The Phantoms NIHL2 side brought the curtain down on the 2017/18 season tonight but not with the sort of performance or result that fans were hoping for to help them forget last weekends Coventry disappointment.
Phantoms opened the game in complete control, dominating possession and looking by far the better side but failed to profit from their dominance, partly due to wasteful finishing and partly due to impressive netminding from Chieftains Sonny Phillips. Whenever a team starts in this fashion, you know exactly what is coming and, sure enough, on 9:49 Grant Bartlett fired a rink length pass to twin brother Cameron to set up the 1on1 and it was 0-1 Chieftains. Phantoms tied the game at 12:11, just seven seconds into the first powerplay of the game as veteran sniper Shaun Yardley reacted sharply to a rebound off the backboards to fire home from a tight angle but they then hit the self-destruct button, gifting Campbell a simple goal after a defensive meltdown and then allowing Leone to skate way too far before finding a gap at Dan Lane’s near post. 1-3 at the end of the first but a period that should have finished level at worst for Phantoms.
Period two again saw Phantoms start brightly and with intensity but again the finishing was off. Sonny Phillips was still seeing it like a beach ball and, once again, it was Chieftains who scored first, on the powerplay at 33:12. Taylor Romeo scrambled home a goal soon after to lift spirits but, as in the first period, the visitors dominated the second half of the period leaving Phantoms fortunate to only leak one further goal for a 2-5 deficit at the second break.
With the theme now well established, Phantoms jumped straight into the final period with Brad Moore breaking through from the face-off to make it 3-5 with just six seconds on the clock. Chieftains pulled one straight back through their import Oravec but James Pentecost forced the one error of the game from netminder Phillips to make it game on at 4-6 and we were still inside the first two minutes of the period. Despite outshooting Chieftains in the final twenty, just as they did in the first forty, Chieftains had few problems dealing with whatever Phantoms had to serve up and once we approached the period midpoint so, once again, Chieftains simply overpowered Phantoms to add three more goals and secure a 4-9 victory.
A frustrating night for Phantoms who man-for-man had the players to more than match their opponents but Chieftains ran a much shorter bench that was much tighter than Phantoms four lines and their experience and positional discipline borne out of playing together in a tight unit every week just proved too much for Phantoms. The Phantoms have quality players and more of them than Chieftains have but as a “pay to play” team, the coach presumably has only limited options to manage the game and the tactics so frustrating outcomes like tonight are inevitable.
A 5th place finish in NIHL2 for Phantoms which is a more than decent effort and I would suggest minor evolution rather than major revolution is all that is needed for this team to kick on next season and finish even higher.
Game stats HERE