Panthers V Phoenix Post Game Thread

[DoUrden]

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[clapyourhands]

After tonights games, and a few quick calculations, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the BMI Elite League Table:

1 Nottingham Panthers 3 2 0 1 0 14 9 5 5
2 Coventry Blaze 2 2 0 0 0 11 7 4 4
3 Belfast Giants 3 2 0 0 1 14 14 0 4
4 Manchester Phoenix 3 1 0 1 1 8 8 0 3
5 Edinburgh Capitals 1 1 0 0 0 5 4 1 2
6 Cardiff Devils 1 1 0 0 0 3 2 1 2
7 Basingstoke Bison 2 1 0 0 1 9 10 -1 2
8 Newcastle Vipers 2 1 0 0 1 6 9 -3 2
9 Hull Stingrays 2 0 0 1 1 3 6 -3 1
10 Sheffield Steelers 3 0 0 1 2 12 16 -4 1

Now come on, that's what we like to see ;D ;D

[spuzz]

What a game ;D

Fantastic atmosphere, fantastic play, amazing checks!, a few little ruff and tumbles, good solid hockey, great goal tending from both Lindsey but even better from Wolfe (that guy is good!), Great goals, liking the music again, announcements worked better, Pander army dances were classic (Ted that wig really looks like your real hair!), Phoenix are back, shirts are in and last but not least TICKETS WERE FREE! (borrowed a season ticket!). All in all and amazing game and i cant believe iv got to go to Reading uni in October and miss most the games this season (well on second thoughts its uni ;D ;D ;D)

Well done guys and hope Cooke, and Stevens recover quickly )

;DWelcome back Phoenix ;D

[Carnell]

really good game tonight, Wolfe played very well, if it wasnt for him, then the score line could have been the same as Bisons game last week, glad Steve opened his account tonight, hope to see more like that, not to sure what happened to Cooke, must have missed that, but i hope that he and Rod are ok for next week!
Manchester seem to be a reasonable team, like to throw their weight around, but dont like it when things dont go there way. But another positive game behind us, another 2 points and what more can we ask of them, only that they keep it up, that goes for the Steelers as well!! 5 points out of 6, oh yes!

[Heanor Lair]

Just a couple of comments:

1. A lady behind me said the Panthers didnt play very well. I disagree. For sure they got out of shape in the 2nd but came back with a tight disciplined performance in the third. When did we say that under Blaisdell??. Phoenix were a well organised hard working team and teams will have to work hard to take points off them.

2. Evan Lindsay: 1 in 31 shots = 96.77 Save%. Some great 1 on 1 saves, surely should have been man of the match. (for interest his GAA is 2.67, Trevor Koeing is 3.50, Mike Minards is 4.67, Cruickshanks is 4.33 and Jody 'The Sieve' Lehman is 5.33 ;D)

HL

[Daddio]

Thought was good game Hand had done his homework and tried to stifle our skating

Losing Cook meant we were basically down to 2 lines and most of our advantage of 3 strong line was lost.

Wa\s notcable that hand kept his brits on their bums most of night as wasa wary of sending them out.

Thought Lindsay was solid all night as was D thgought Rees was exceptional no PIMs and came out with Puck 95% of time.

Great atmosphere great night !! Good Night

[Matt]

Good solid neck and neck game.Quite unlike the goal-fest last week,but entertaining none the less!

Manchester are a good,solid,hardworking team and their goalie was awesome!

Elite League website says that there was 4500 there

I wanted to see Shmyr and Campbell(JC lookalike) drop them but it didn`t quite get that far.Oh well next time eh? ;D

Good to see all the Phoenix fans in attendance aswell.

And last but not least we are top and Squeelers are bottom-how cool is that? ;D

[Heanor Lair]

Didnt we lose Stevens as well?, or was it just Cookie?

HL

[Heanor Lair]

Hand managed to get a 10 + game at the end - thats knackered my Fantasy League points for Saturday

HL

[Thomas Elliott]

Quality game tonight. Lindsay was brilliant and I thought we deserved more than the two goals, but Wolfe was very good!! Our passing and skating is brilliant, and the amount of shots we had prove how good Wolfe was tonight!! Think on tonights performance we shall be a good match for any team in this league!! 5 points from 6 is a great record and we look extremely good, especially as we were two D men down before tonight and lost both Cooke, don't know what happened to him, and Stevens, I presume that was when he went down in the Manchester crease and just skated off the ice!!

Hoping that table looks the smae as that come March time!!

[P.G.F.I.]

Brill game. Loved the atmosphere.

Also i thought Rees played very well, he wasn't standing out to me on the first few games but he played great tonight.
And a big well done to Lindsay, as Ellis said "The guys who plays in the big games" and he just did that tonight.
Great TEAM effort.
Keep it up Panthers. ;D

[spuzz]

Apparently Cooke has done his shoulder in (must be in fashion i think )

Rod I'm not sure about but hes defiantly injured as he disappeared to the dressing room and didn't come back as far as i know, didn't even see him skating round the ice at the end

One more thing is it just me or does Rod look remarkably like Calle!

[matt44]

What a game! Although we made damn hard work of it!

We didnt have the rub of the green and hence, a lot of bad bounces and bobbles and VERY near misses.

But the guys buckled down and got the win.

How in earth we didnt score 5 in the first period alone escapes me. Wolfe is going to keep Manchester in alot of games this season.

[andyd]

Do keep up spuzz I said that last week!

Another win it seems, I haven't heard anything about the game since I was at the Miami Redhawks V Kent State College Football game and ih-update seems to be having some problems.

Can't believe we have another two injuries, Mopes, Meyers, Cooke and Stevens, what is it with the Panthers injury curse...it happens every year without fail, this year a bit earlier than usual!?

Still there is nothing sweeter in British Ice Hockey than seeing a league table with the Panthers sitting pretty at the top and the Steelers in the cellar bringing up the rear. Oh happy days, long may it continue!

[P.G.F.I.]

Paul Moran will be back in 2 weeks.

[PeteW]

I must be getting old. I nearly fell asleep in the 2nd period. I don't mind cutting out the hooking and holding, but it seemed to me it was almost none contact hockey for the most part. If it had gone to OT, which it very nearly did, it wouldn't have finished until almost 10.
At least we ended up with the result we deserved. I thought that the Phoenix came with a very defensive gameplan and only pressed on rare occasions. How a game with so many penalties, many of them 5 on 3, can end up with one powerplay goal beggars belief.
P.S. IH-Update has let me down badly tonight. I gave up trying to keep track of the stats as I was trying to concentrate on the face-offs, only to find when I get home that the game wasn't covered. Looks like I'll have to wait for the Cardiff programme.

[Rob #12]

Some photos of tonights game at Panthers Online.

Doesn't tell the story of the game well, but some shots are okay.

www.panthersonline.co.uk/index.php?page=latest

Rob

[DerbyDave72]

heanorlair said:

Hand managed to get a 10 + game at the end - thats knackered my Fantasy League points for Saturday

HL

I have been and remain a big Tony Hand fan but as a player/coach he is letting himself down with his behaviour over the last 2 seasons.

Saw him have a brief word with the ref. at the end which obviously resulted in the 10 + game. Phoenix were entitled to feel disappointed at not taking a point from the game but Hand is setting a bad example to his players behaving in this fashion.

[ally85]

Good game tonight... well, the first and third periods anyway. Second was a bit dull at times I thought - we got really sloppy with our passing for a time but the Phoenix didn't quite seem to have the killer instinct to capitalise. Better teams will, I fear.

A couple of quick questions: firstly, is it compulsory for the player who was brought down when through on goal to take the ensuing penalty shot or is that just convention? Some of the Phoenix players were very unhappy to see Petricko rather than Shmyr lining up to take the shot (although they needn't have worried really... pretty lame effort to be honest)

Secondly, what were the Manchester players complaining about after Simoes scored the winner (and presumably that Hand got himself in trouble for arguing about after the game?) - did they feel that the puck hadn't gone in the net or were they still grumbling about the penalty that had put us on the PP in the first place or something else?

[matt44]

Surely they cant have been complaining about the penalty? From where I sat in block 5, the guy hit Petricko from behind and Matus went about 5 feet in the air?

Maybe wrong but thats what I recall........AND i'm sober too....lol

[Baz]

Can I take this opportunity to ask Stef who the Manchester Sphinx are? Chortle chortle. I still call Basingstoke the Beavers, but that's mildly amusing at least.

[grumpyminer]

Still concerned about Lindsay, yes I realise he has a good GAA but he must have the cleanest glove in British hockey, nothing sticks - and he seems to take ages to cover the puck when it drops in his vicinity.

D was pretty good for most of the game. Rees was looking better. Loved how we shut shop after Simoes scored.

Clarkey deserved MoM, worked hard and was full of confidence.
Great slap shot to give us the lead.

Liked the look of Phoenix, Seem to be a strong quick side who defend well and have a top nettie.

Best moment of the match!!?
Gotta be James Neil stealing the puck away from Tony Hand like candy from a baby. Stand up the new Great(British) One!!

[Mark]

What we saw tonight wa a team. Blaisdell's old pals act last season would have packed up and gone home well before the end of this match, but Mike Ellis' squad never stopped chasing, and finally got their reward four minutes before the hooter.
Great all round team performance, special mention to Ryan Shmyr for working his guts out, and Evan Lindsey for a fine job between the pipes.

[pantherfan]

Pretty good game, hard to see if our powerplay was crap ot Wolfes goaltending was more amazing then it looked, but hey points are points.

[Higgy]

Well to be honest apart from the the first ten mins and the last ten mins tonights game bored me somewhat, Manchester defended with ALL their men and for the most part (thanks to Wolfe we couldnt score!) It was getting so frustrating until a top Simoes goal won it, Phoenix offered little going forward but we just couldnt find a way through!

A few of our players had an off night, we seemed to miss many one time shots, as in totally missed by players and Petricko's pen shot was awful, but to be honest he never looked like he was going to score, ah well we won

Atmosphere i thought wasnt that great until the last period and was it me or did the steward tell the Pandas to quieten down? But still good to see Manchester back, they brought a fair few fans which was nice to see, we are number one say we are number one!