Ice hockey Pitbulls gain just one point from disappointing weekend
BRISTOL Pitbulls gained a solitary point over the weekend after a 3-2 overtime defeat to the Sheffield Steeldogs, which was followed by a 7-1 defeat at the league-leading Leeds Knights. The point gained on Saturday night was enough to see the Pitbulls climb above Basingstoke Bison in the league standings.
Aaron Moody continued his spell with the Pitbulls, while Joe Morris, Josh Shaw and Tamas Elias all returned to the line-up.
Morgan Clarke-Pizzo made his debut on Saturday night, and along with Caly Robertson and Owen Sobchak, looked very bright in the opening period, but the first goal came from Mason Lipsey. He deflected an Ed Bradley shot to give the Pitbulls the lead after less than three minutes.
Both teams spent long spells of the game in and out of the penalty box, and the Steeldogs capitalised on a five-on-three opportunity in the last two minutes of period one, with James Spurr scoring at the back door.
Period two was heavily affected by penalties, with neither team really getting anything going, and the same could be said for the first 15 minutes of the final stanza, but with a Steeldog in the box, Mason Lipsey found his second goal of the game courtesy of another deflection, to give the Pitbulls the lead with less than four minutes on the clock. Sadly for the hosts, they couldn’t cling on. Just more than 30 seconds later the Steeldogs were level again. Spurr with his second and for the second weekend in a row, the Pitbulls were heading to overtime. The OT period was decided after 71 seconds, Vladislava Vulkanovs with the winner.
Sunday night was always going to
be tough, Leeds Knights came into the weekend, and were given a point to prove after throwing away a 6-2 lead in Milton Keynes on Saturday night. The Pitbulls matched them for much of the game but a bad spell in each of the first two periods, combined with the excellent Knights netminder Sam Gospel put pay to any chance of the Pitbulls coming away from Yorkshire with points.
Leeds scored twice in five minutes, the first bad spell for the visitors, through Cole Shudra and Kieran Brown. Goal three was unfortunate, as it appeared to be offside, but the linesperson disagreed,
and the Knights profited through Haywood.
Period two was better, and the bad spell for the Pitbulls lasted less than a minute, but the Knights scored two in that minute. A powerplay goal from Cole Shudra was followed by Brown’s second.
Zach Brooks scored the sixth for Leeds before the Pitbulls got themselves on the board. It was clever work below the red line, Solder fed the puck out in front and Mason Lipsey was on hand to get his third goal of the weekend. Knights captain Brown sealed his hat-trick in the final six minutes and the Knights saw out a comfortable win, keeping them top of the Planet Ice NIHL National Division.
Jamie Elson has challenged his team to see out games better. He said: “It’s a disappointment really over the two games. Generally, over the past few weeks, we have been slowly improving and moving forward. Frustratingly, we are just finding ways to concede poor goals and lose games we shouldn’t. We score with three-and-a-half minutes to play and we have to then be smart and kill a game off, but instead we just switch off mentally and emotionally and end up losing a game. It’s simply not good enough to let results slip like that.”