Steeler's take it on the road

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Guildford Flames ice hockey club held a lead to start the final period, but then 3 straight by league leading Sheffield Steelers gave them a margin they would not fully hand back during their 6-5 win over the visiting Spectrum side.

A pair of Steelers goals 50 seconds apart halfway through the first period had them enjoying an early cushion. Robert Dowd at 9:57 was followed up by Evan Mosey at 10:47. Flames cut into the deficit nearly immediately thanks to a Chris Gerrie powerplay strike at 11:29 and another powerplay yielded the equalizer just over a minute from period time through Ian McNulty.

Flames bagged their 3rd powerplay goal at 26:42 with an Ian Watters marker. Steelers hit back with an extra man shortly thereafter when Marc-Olivier Vallerand squared it at 3 each, but a Levi Cable goal at 34:13 had Flames holding a slim advantage to start the 3rd.

An early 3rd period powerplay for the Flames flipped away from the nightly trend and began a quick 3 goal run at 45:57 when Steelers squared it shorthanded with Vallerand’s 2nd of the contest. At 48:09 Mosey’s 2nd put them in front and 11 seconds later they were up a pair off the stick of Robert Dowd. Robert Lachowicz cut the final deficit just over 2 minutes from time, but despite a last 28 second stretch of 6 on 4 manpower advantage they could not find another ahead of the final buzzer.

“If someone would have told us we would score 5 tonight, we would have taken that thinking that would be enough for a win, but wouldn’t you know it, Sheffield just gets the extra,” mused Paul Dixon.

“Sort of the story of our results at the moment where whatever the outcome we are just a bit short. Again, we did a lot of good stuff tonight, but we did make a few very crucial and glaring errors that immediately and directly ended up in our net so despite plenty of openings to take this game ourselves, and a fair bit of offensive zone time, we remain frustrated.”

“Back home Sunday to take on Coventry and another chance to turn this around a bit and to a man we need to re-set and start to think about what we are going to do to continue the good things we are doing, and really tighten up on the bigger errors that are so costly for us.”