There was a genuine air of optimism at Bretton tonight as the Penguins lined up with extra bodies including the return of their first choice netminder and, against doctor’s orders, the return of their influential captain. Visitors, the Midnight Stars of Oxford, were no lightweights having recently run high flying Basingstoke very close as well as beating Coventry and Swindon in their last two home fixtures.
That air of optimism was further fueled when Sharon Khan fired under Stars netminder at 3.27 to put Penguins ahead and it was a lead that the girls could and should have extended but they were to pay for their misses as Stars battled back to take the period by a flattering 1-3 scoreline with both sides unleashing 12 shots on goal.
Period two was all about one player, Stars forward Katerina Lossnitzer who has played Elite League hockey for several seasons and who, this season, has rejoined her local side for the last four games where she has scored 90% of Stars goals in a run of three wins and a narrow defeat. The twenty year old personal fitness trainer mixes her hockey with running marathons so qualifies as an elite athlete on multiple levels. Lossnitzer’s standard of skating and finishing was akin to dropping a good U18 into an U12s game and she was simply unplayable. At one point, she scored a straight hat-trick in just 17 seconds ….. taking each face-off, winning the puck and then driving through and finishing top corner each time. Her personal return for the middle period alone was 7+2 and her return for the game was 12+3, scoring ten of Stars last twelve goals !
Somewhere in amongst the demoralising carnage, Georgia Whittemore bundled home a rebound off a Sharon Khan close range effort to prompt brief celebrations but with the Stars coach double-shifting Lossnitzer despite having twelve skaters on the bench, it was clear that there was never going to be any let up or any mercy …… in truth, it made for uncomfortable viewing and I’m not sure I really understood the approach from the Stars coach.
To the credit of Penguins, they called a time-out after the quick fire hat-trick and whilst nothing was going to stop the goal machine from churning out more product, they did start to get tighter and more disruptive with Sue O’Sullivan doing a particularly good job of getting something on just about everything !
There was really no evidence of a let up from Stars in the final period so credit has to go to Penguins for toughing it out and for finding ways to slow down their opponents to the tune of only losing the period 0-4.
Watching Penguins struggle at the moment reminds me of the 1996/97 Pirates season where the team took endless heavy beatings but ….. they kept wearing the shirt with pride and kept the team going when the temptation must have been to just walk away from it all. That season was one of the most important ever for Pirates simply because they never gave up and they kept things going for long enough to rebuild for the good times that were to come.
There are positive moves in the pipeline for Team Penguins. There are good people behind the scenes already planning for next season and the future may well prove to be as good as it turned out to be after the Pirates 96/97 season but ….. we have to get there first and that is purely down to the dedication of this season’s team who, no matter what happened in the last game, need to keep coming back week in, week out and keep wearing the shirt with pride as I’m positive they will.
The girls have two fixtures next weekend with a home game on Saturday against Streatham, face-off 6:15pm and then a long road trip to Cardiff on Sunday for a 4:15pm start.
Game stats HERE