Pregame
Welcome to Love Hockey Will Travel, here on 2 For Flinching. So each weekend I try to attend hockey games, somewhere in the UK. So I have decided to blog about my experiences doing this.
So we begin, with a trip up the road, quite literally for me as I have recently moved to Streatham(more on this another time)
Streatham, have been a team I have had admiration for since the decision to rebrand last season following a fan vote. In a sport littered with examples of people defending offensive status quos surrounding team names and homophobia. The Streatham Redhawks have shown themselves to be beacon of hope against such thinking.
This game, would write them in to the history books for yet more positive reasons. As the Streatham Redhawks became the first British Hockey team to use Pride tape in open play. Holding a pride night. Where it was wonderful to see many of the local LGBT and LGBT hockey community in the UK come along and have a wonderful time.
If any of them were at their first hockey game, they got a very good and entertaining game. That had a bit of everything that a hockey buffet could offer up.
A look down both rosters showed the promise of a close game, Thunder had tonnes of size in their team, sacrificing speed for physicality. They also had a lot of high level experience with players such as Lewis Christie, Rupert Quinney, Tom Carlon and Grant McPherson.
Streatham would have to look to exploit the explosive speed of players like Alex Sampford and Jacob Ranson, and the skill, and early season goal gathering skills of Aidan Doughty and Adam Carr in the absence of player of the month Ryan Watt
The Game
It was eventually though the Redhwaks who drew first blood. As a unit the team went end to end, with Alex Sampford leading the charge rushing to the net and forcing home the puck squeezing it past Tom Annetts pad after a pass from Ben Paynter.
Streatham would end the period 1-0 up over Thunder. But the second period would see the game, which had been poised upon a knife edge shift in the Thunders favor. As a combination of physical play and poor discipline on the part of the Hawks cost them bodies on the ice and the bench.
Shortly in to the Second, Ben Paynter boarded Hallen Barnes Gardner, in the aftermath of this both had a few words for one another, which lead to a dropping of the gloves. The fight was more of a hugging match than a fight. But it served its purpose as Paynter got 2 for boarding and 2 for roughing, with Gardner 2 for roughing. But this meant Brandon Miles having to cover the roughing call. Depleting the roster corps coach Cornish could call upon.
Streatham managed to weather this storm for a while, however the game took a turn for the chippier minutes later. Heading in to the corner for a lose puck, Chris Cooke and Grinell Parke had a collision. In the aftermath Parke jumped on Cooke and another small scuffle ensued. The fallout of which left the home fans perplexed as Cooke picked up a 2+2 while Parke only received 2 for roughing.
Streatham continued to weather the storm, as Mathew Colclough stopped everything thrown at him. While equally the Thunder continued the trend of this game of squandering chances. However eventually Thunder found a way to break the shut out.
The puck took an odd bounce in the bottom corner of the rink, landing on Tom Carlon's stick who fed Grinell-Parke who backhanded home, to tie the game at 1-1. Thunder would then take the lead 7 minutes later. An attempted clearance took a bad deflection off referee Thompson to the feet of Jamie Line. Who fed the puck to a waiting Ross Bowers who went top cheddar to make it 2-1 Thunder.
Thunder would end the period 3-1 up as a contentious roughing penalty on Brandon Miles,lead to a PP conversion. The build up would see Matt Colclough do all he could to hold the puck out twice having to make desperation saves at open back doors. However it was Gareth O'Flaherty's speed that would lead to the puck finding Tom Mboya who fed Ross Bowers who sniped to make it 3-1 Thunder.
Despite being 3-1 down Streatham would enter the 3rd period with some hope. An extremely soft tripping penalty call at 39:56 on Ross Green had give Streatham 1:56 of power play to try and break through the wall Tom Annetts and the Thunder defense had erected.
Thunders PK began, what would turn in to a shut down master class in the third. Michael Farn would lead a ranged bombardment of the Thunder net, with plenty of traffic in front as the less mobile Thunder defense, collapsed in on Tom Annetts. However rebounds, loose pucks none of them found a stick with Pride tape.
Despite the only goal for the Redhawks having been from close range, the Thunder D forced the Hawks continue to fire the puck from range. They we were winning their fare share of the face offs these ranged shots were generating, however no sooner did a Hawks player take possesion of the puck he was presented with a human wall in a Thunder jersey. Thunder had begun to amp up the physical stuff, taking the Redhawks speed out of the game as a factor.
As a last gamble, with just under 2 mins left Coach Cornish called a Time out and pulled his net minder. But Tom Annetts, and the physical play of the Thunder meant it was a gamble did not pay off. And the buzzer sounded on what had been a tense, but entertaining game.
The Aftermath
Thunder came in and played a great road game here, they dominated physically. Not only that but they controlled it to keep themselves out of the box, later on when they needed to close out the game. Too often teams will pick up the hitting and draw needless penalties as a result. They kept the Redhawks to the outside and denied them the slot area. Forcing the Hawks to rely on shots from the point and out wide. Despite the traffic and chaos this generated around his crease at Streatham went looking for a rebound, especially in the later stages of the game. Tom Annetts really deserved his MOTM beers. Dan Rose got the beers for Streatham and I feel that was justified as he did the thing I look for in a D-Man, I barely noticed him. I would've considered Alex Sampford and Jamie Hayes as they seemed to be the main creative outlets for the Redhawks all night
