EIHL week 3 round-up
No midweek action to report on, but plenty of weekend matchups as most of the teams get into full stride – only Braehead are yet to join the party but they debut this weekend.
It’s Belfast Giants who have edged ahead in the early season league standings. Two wins over Scottish opposition have the Northern Irish team on nine points, one clear of Nottingham, Coventry and Sheffield.
Saturday night saw Giants easily brush aside a pretty tame challenge from Edinburgh with Caps not troubling the scorer until the 54th minute, by which time they were 7-0 in arrears. The scoring was spread around by Giants but young Brit Robert Dowd fired in a double.
An all-together tougher night for Giants in Dundee on Sunday as this one went all the way into overtime without a goal being scored. The 0-0 tie saw the spoils shared in the Challenge Cup but going into the extra period it was a strike by Brock McBride in the 64th minute that sealed it for Doug Christiansen’s men. Plenty of encouragement for those with Dundee connections however.
Nottingham skate into second place by virtue of more regulation wins and they were in ominous attacking form over the weekend while accounting for Fife and Edinburgh on the road in Scotland. Flyers gave notice that they are slowly getting the pace of the Elite League and while they eventually went down 6-2 to Panthers there were good signs for Todd Dutiaume’s charges.
Panthers were simply too strong however, and David Clarke counted twice as Panthers won the game by taking the middle session 4–1. In Edinburgh on Sunday, Capitals were once again outgunned by their visitors and were blanked 8-0. A 25 shot shutout for Craig Kowalski, a treble for David-Alexandre Beauregard and two more for David Clarke as he keeps his record going of scoring at least one goal in every one of Panthers’ games this season so far.
It’s Coventry and Sheffield also on eight points with Blaze posting a double victory home and away over Hull and Steelers splitting their home and away series with Cardiff.
Blaze needed a third period surge to skate clear of Stingrays in the Skydome on Saturday with Owen Fussey scoring a hat trick, while the next night in Hull the game was very even and in fact went to overtime where a 2-2 tie was snapped by John Gordon’s game winning goal in the 61st minute.
Steelers were well beaten and in fact blanked by Stevie Lyle and his Cardiff teammates on Saturday in Wales. The final was 4-0 and Phil Hill chipped in with two for the victors while Lyle posted 34 saves. A different story back in Sheffield on Sunday as Steelers prevailed 5-3 but they had to come from behind and score three times inside the final eight minutes with the game winner coming from Mike Ramsay in the 54th minute.
Player of the Week to finish and we ask that man David Clarke (pictured above) to skate forward and receive his applause. It has been an impressive start to the season for the Nottingham marksman and as we mentioned earlier, he has found the net in every one of Panthers competitive games so far this season (six games), scoring a total of eight goals, with four of those coming in the last week.
Courtesy of Ronnie Nichol and Jim Lydon.
