National clash was a bittersweet one for Wild
FOLLOWING their historic Laidler Division title win at the end of the 2018/19 season, the YKKsponsored Widnes Wild qualified to take part in the NIHL Division 2 National Championship game.
This was a relatively new fixture in the ice hockey calendar and, to date, has only ever been played twice - so being only one of four teams ever to have taken part in the national N2 final, the Wild are part of a very select club.
Since the launch of the modern British League in 1982, club ice hockey in Britain at its highest level has always been played on a national basis.
The current Elite League has regional conferences but an overall national league structure and the new, second tier, NIHL National Division is, by its own definition, also a “national” division.
From 1982 onwards, the British Championship (a completely different trophy and title to the “British League league champions” title) has been decided by a play off weekend held at a big venue at the end of the regular season.
Both the NIHL North and South Division One competitions (known as the “Moralee” and “Britton” Divisions and both named in honour of previous ice hockey administrators) have always had their own play off competitions, with the top finishing teams in the league playing home and away legs to arrive at an overall winner
- but these have always been kept separate between the north and south.
After the demise of the English Premier League (national tier 2 competition) in the summer of 2017 after several teams had left for various reasons leaving the competition with too few teams to remain viable, the leftover sides joined either the Moralee (north) or Britton (south) Divisions depending on their location - and, because the EPL had always had a national play off weekend in the past, the appetite was there to come up with a new type of event to finish off the season.
It was decided that both the expanded North and South Division ones would have their own separate league championships and then home and away play-off competitions each would meet in Coventry in April for a “Final Four” weekend to decide an overall national play off champion.
The two semi-finals were to be played on the Saturday and the final on the Sunday and, in order to pad out the programme somewhat and to include more teams and attract more fans to this new gala event, it was decided to invite the winners of the two regional Division 2 leagues – the Laid- ler Division in the
north and Wilkinson
in the South to take part in a new Division 2 National Championship game – the first time this had ever been done. The first such Division 2 game took place at the inaugural “Final Four” weekend in Coventry in April 2018. This saw North champions Sutton Sting take on South champions Oxford City Stars with the result being a very close 1-3 victory for the Wilkinson Division winners. The Wild had visited the Coventry Skydome Arena on many occasions but that, following before, playing against the Coventry all of NIHL Blaze in the Laidler Division, that, the top and had not lost there since their two teams in debut 2013/14 season - but this was a special one-off game at a neutral venue being played in front of a sizeable crowd of fans from mixed teams and so was very much an unknown quantity.
Prior to the Coventry game, Widnes had never played a competitive game against a team from NIHL South before – although they had played two pre-season challenge games in the past against the Bristol Pitbulls, winning once and losing once.
In fact, they
did not even know who they were going to be playing against in the National Final until the last of the NIHL South Division 2 Wilkinson league games, which were only completed the weekend before.
The South 2 title race was incredibly close finished with both Jets and Solent ils locked on 51 the top of the table but, as won both the Devils – 8-3 away nights was to and Slough Devpoints at final league Slough had games against 3-1 at home and on successive back in October – it the Jets who were able claim top spot based on results between the two teams.
As to the match itself, while it was a obviously a privilege for the North 2 champions to be involved in this one-off game against the South 2 champions, it will probably be looked back on as a bit of a disappointment overall.
Slough had the upper hand for long periods of the game and, when Widnes did have their chances, they weren’t able to make them count.
That said, the first period was, in fact, very close and Widnes had the chance to take the lead after Jakub Hajek was felled while bearing down on goal and he was awarded a penalty shot.
Unfortunately, his attempt was blocked by the Slough netminder’s pad and the first goal eventually went to the Jets in the 17th minute.
Slough edged further ahead early in the second period and were 4-0 up before Chris Gee finally put the Wild on the scoresheet with just under two minutes to go to the second break.
Any hopes of a third period rally by the Wild were dashed by another Slough goal just two minutes from the restart – the fifth from the same player, Sean Norris – and insult was added to injury with two more goals within 20 seconds of each other with five minutes left on the clock, which rounded off the scoring for the game at 1-7 to the Jets.
Despite the result, Wild player Chris Gee still has fond memories of the game: He said: “I remember the atmosphere was good. It was loud with the bigger crowd but still not the same atmosphere as being at Widnes - even though we have fewer people at the games.
“Before the game everyone looked calm and composed in the changing room and we were all having a laugh.
“We had a decent warm up and felt excited to play and I feel like the score didn’t tell the real story of the game.
“We did play well, but not to the best of our ability, even though we all still worked hard and wanted to be there - but sometimes these things happen.”
Looking back at his goal, Gee said: “During the game, I personally felt fit, strong and confident. In my mind, my job was to put the pressure on the other team as much as I could and be the workhorse chasing down everything in sight.
“I remember the goal. We had been putting pressure on them in their zone and, as the puck was shot in I remember skating towards the net. As I looked at their goalie, I noticed he had left a gap on one side.
As the shot missed the net, the puck bounced off the back boards and I knew that all I had to do was to get a touch in as quickly as I could whilst there was still a gap.”
Looking back at the D2 National Championship game, Wild Assistant coach Richard Charles said: “These are the kind of games as players you should relish and rise to.
“Unfortunately I think the significance of the event took over the team a bit. The biggest thing I can remember - and which I personally thought deflated the team - was the news that Michal Novak h a d come down with a stomach bug overnight and wasn’t going to be able to play. He was clearly a big part of our strike force and we did look to him and Jakub, as our imports, to really rise to such games and, when they do, you then hope that the rest of team follows. Jakub worked very hard maybe too hard at times - and got a little frustrated, which is understandable.”
“We didn’t really single out anyone in their roster. Obviously Smital brought a wealth of experience to Slough and he was clearly their leader, old head and calming influence both on and off the ice.
“With the slow start that we had, a door opened for Norris and he capitalised with a fantastic performance scoring five of their seven goals.
“We just didn’t make an impact early enough and we played catch up the whole game.
“I recall myself, Ollie and Mark having a final rally of the troops in the second interval and the boys gave everything in that third period but it was just too late.
“The score in my opinion did not reflect our performance, our fight or our capability, but the belief just wasn’t there. That comes with experience and Smital’s presence certainly brought that out in the Slough team.
“It was a great experience and the feeling of losing shouldn’t be forgotten, but be brought to mind in future games to drive the belief and success of the club forward.
A mentality of ‘Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’ has to be the mantra. It did put a little dampener on the success we had over the season, but two golds and a silver is something that I was, and we should all be, very proud of.”
The advent of the new NIHL National Division (2nd tier) for the 2019/20 season saw another reshuffle in the end of season play off arrangements across the divisions.
It was decided that the “Final Four” weekend would continue at Coventry as before with the top teams from two qualifying groups meeting in semifinals and final.
The Moralee, Britton, Laidler and Wilkinson north and south divisions were to have their own play-off weekends – held at Sheffield, Bracknell, Widnes and Alexandra Palace respectively - with the top four teams from each league meeting in straight semis and final.
The plan was for the winners of the North 1 play off weekend at Sheffield and the South 1 event at Bracknell to meet up in a new one-off Division 1 National Championship game at the Coventry weekend, as had been done with the D2 teams in the two previous years, although there was no mention of continuing with the Division 2 version this time around.
As things turned out, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, it was all rather academic as the ice hockey season was curtailed in mid-March and none of the proposed post-season play off events took place.