Phantoms Edged Out in Penalty Shot Drama !

Live Period Reports ………..

First Period

Goals: 2:23 Padalek (1-0), 9:06 McEwen OG (1-1), 9:29 McEwen (2-1)

Very lively opening twenty with both sides looking like they wanted this one badly. Phantoms opened the scoring when Glenn Billing’s shot on the spin deflected on to Ales Padalek with Mettam completely wrongfooted and it was a simple tap in for 1-0.

Bison tied the game with a freak goal when a pass across the front of Jordan Marr was neatly turned into his own goal by a rather embarrassed looking Corey McEwen.

Of course when you score one at the wrong end then you need to go put matters right and McEwen immediately raced onto a neat late feed from Martins Susters to beat Mettam and restore Phantoms lead.

The sizeable crowd very much enjoyed not only the end to end hockey but seeing Phantoms players getting involved in a couple of lively bouts with Nathan Pollard and Ales Padalek both standing up well in their bouts !

Nice opener ….. hopefully more to come !

Phantoms 2 Bison 1

Second Period

Goals: 31.15 Klejna (2-2)

A very, very tight period with both teams keeping their netminder well protected. There were very few clean chances for either side but Bison grabbed the only goal of the period when a speculative wrist shot was deflected home in front of Marr.

Phantoms had a big powerplay late in the period but not only did they fail to establish any control, they coughed up three very decent chances for a Bison shorthanded, all of which were desperately swept clear.

In the final minute, Phantoms fell for the returning player jumping from the sinbin to go 1on1 trick which required a desperate diving sweep tackle to save the day but the penalty call will leave Bison on the powerplay for the first 1.55 of the final twenty.

This one could go either way and you wouldn’t bet against overtime !

Phantoms 2 Bison 2

Third Period

Nail biting stuff as both sides maintained a tight defensive grip on the game with neither netminder needing to deliver anything beyond the norm.

Both sides had powerplay opportunities but both penalty kill units were mightily impressive and overtime looked an increasing certainty by the minute.

A late too many men call gave Phantoms the extra man advantage going into overtime ….. would that be the decider?

Phantoms 2 Bison 2

Overtime

Well it wasn’t to be as despite Phantoms hogging 90% of the possession throughout overtime, the Bison D was simply too strong and off we went to penalty shots.

In tune with the game itself, penalties were on a knife edge throughout but three very impressive finishes from Michal Klejna gave Bison the extra point with a 3-2 advantage over five attempts.

MOM for Phantoms was Jordan Marr

Summary

Anybody who thought the title race was all over will be thinking again after this one point weekend. Two tough games, two tight finishes, two defeats for Phantoms. However, the league table still puts Phantoms in a strong position and, despite the results, they played well in both games ….. they just got beaten by better teams on the night !

Game stats HERE