Gee’s running Wild with five-star show
BLACKBURNHAWKS2 ................... 0 YKK WIDNES WILD ....................... 23
Charlie Ratcliffe and Clancy for his hat-trick.
Anderson fired in a shorthanded goal for his second of the game and new German import Daniel Haid followed up just 13 seconds later.
Further goals from Redwood, Mike Mawer and Dippnall put the score at 20-0 for the Wild, matching their highest ever winning margin, which had come against the Deeside Dragons 2 development side back in the 2017/18 season, when they beat them 22–2.
However, there were still five minutes to go in this game Mawer fired in his second goal of the night and Gee scored two more goals to land himself an incredible fivegoal haul.
The resulting 23-0 victory is the Wild’s highest ever goal tally in a competitive match and was also their biggest ever winning margin. While Gee was the top goalscorer with five goals, Dippnall weighed in with four goals and five assists and Hajek contributed 2 + 5.
Wild net minder Tom McDonald only faced eight shots all evening and picked up a Shut Out.
It is very difficult to put into words quite how dominant the Wild were in this game.
They peppered the Blackburn goal with 57 shots in the first period alone – which is more shots than are often seen in an entire game between two evenly matched sides.
They followed this up with 39 shots in the second period and 38 in the third period and their grand total of 134 shots in a 60-minute game is surely some sort of league record.
Every member of the Wild squad managed to get on the scoresheet with the exception of the two netminders, so it was a very good allround performance.
The MVP Award for the Wild went to Chris Gee and, rather unusually, for the Hawks 2 the honour went to Emma Pearson, who is better known as the team captain for the Widnes Wild women’s team.
She made two guest appearances for the Wild NIHL team over the Christmas period and was playing for the Hawks 2 as a guest player for this game, due to their under-strength bench.
The Wild are next in action this Saturday (January 25) when they face the somewhat tougher prospect of a trip to third-placed Altrincham Aces, with a 7pm face off.
They are then at home on Sunday, January 26, when they take on the same opposition at Planet Ice Widnes – 5.30pm face off.