No gifts for Hull as Blaze demolish Stingrays
There was no late Christmas present from the Coventry Blaze to the Hull Stingrays last night at the Skydome as the Blaze saw off the visitors with a clinical display. The evening had started well for the home side as a bumper crowd packed out the Skydome, certainly appearing to be greater than the reported 2,311 in attendance. The faceoff had to be delayed for 10 minutes to allow everyone to get in; a promising sign for the cash-strapped Blaze.
Coventry took the lead on 12.18; Owen Fussey broke away down the right hand side as part of an odd-man rush. With Bryan Jurynec uncovered, Hull netminder Christian Boucher had to respect the pass and was found out with Fussey unleashing a laser of a shot into the bottom corner. The third line would strike again shortly after, this time Jurynec notching his first competitive goal for the Blaze with a scrappy effort. Hull were left unhappy with the second, presumably claiming goaltender interference. Jurynec appeared to be outside of the crease, so any interference would be marginal at best; although a replay would certainly be interesting.
Stingrays seemed to let their frustrations at the decisions being made in the wrong direction; instead of focusing on getting back into the game they continued to give ref Andy Carson reasons to call more penalties on them, and the Blaze would capitalise twice on the powerplay in the second period with Dustin Wood and Greg Owen getting on the scoresheet with two very different efforts; Wood with a long-range blast from the point and Owen with a deft flick over Boucher’s shoulder. The only bright point for Hull was that Jereme Tendler also got on the scoresheet between those two, leaving the score at 4-1.
There was more ill-discipline in the third as Derek Campbell, as he often did at the Skydome, made a show of himself. Firstly, a slash on Frank Bakrlik earned him a two minute minor (which could have been more) and then he took exception to a clean hip-check from Dave Phillips and proceeded to try and fight him. In a bizarre quirk of the rule book, Campbell took a five minute fighting major, but Phillips (who hadn’t committed a penalty) received nothing. It has often been said Campbell could start a fight in an empty room, and he went some way to proving that last night.
Phillips would be forced to fight eventually, with Jason Silverthorn unhappy with another clean hit from the Blaze defenceman. Silverthorn might think twice in the next encounter as he was clearly defeated in the fight and his actions proved pointless. Away from all of the glove-dropping, Shea Guthrie scored for the Blaze with a lovely solo effort, and Dominic Osman scored on a fine team goal for the Stingrays.
Hull are still the team that cut Bakrlik, generally sound across the board but lack scoring in depth. After Tendler and Osman, there is not much left. Blaze again had scoring from the Owen line, the Guthrie line and two powerplay goals. Seven wins in a row have now put the Blaze back in the title hunt.
This has been helped by results across the league over the Christmas period. Belfast dropped points to Braehead and the Steelers slipped up twice against Nottingham. If the top 4 could win all of their games in hand, the table would be Sheffield 52 pts, Belfast 50 pts, Nottingham 49 pts and Coventry 46 pts. It is very close and all of those teams will take points from each other, and slip up along the way. It’s definitely going to be an interesting second half of this EIHL season.
