YKK WIDNES WILD Historic first as Wild beat Lions
NOTTINGHAM LIONS .... 2 YKK WIDNES WILD ........ 7
THE YKK sponsored Widnes Wild picked up their first Moralee Division win of the season (and, in fact, ever - as this is their first campaign competing in the higher division) with a 2-7 victory away to Nottingham Lions on Sunday.
Battles between the two “big cats” have always been memorable encounters over the years and it was important that Widnes put in a good display on this occasion as Nottingham have traditionally struggled since stepping up a league and have been the whipping boys of the division in recent seasons.
Despite the fairly comprehensive final scoreline, this game was actually very close for much of the time and could easily have gone either way. There were no goals in the first period and it took until the 26th minute for the first breakthrough, which came courtesy of the Wild’s Vlads Vulkanovs, who scored on a delayed penalty call. Widnes went two goals up five minutes later with a second strike from Vulkanovs but the Lions pulled a goal back just 90 seconds later to keep themselves in the game.
A second goal for the hosts with just over a minute to go in the period levelled up the score, leaving the match finely balanced at 2-2 with 20 minutes left to play.
Widnes upped their game considerably in the third period and were notably the better side. They outshot the Lions by 19 to 8 and killed the game off with five unanswered goals.
The first of these came from player coach Richard Haggar just 4 minutes into the period and then Mikey Gilbert doubled the lead on 47 minutes.
A strike from Nathan Britton and a brace from Jakub Hajek sealed the win for the Wild and the 2-7 result saw them climb to third place in the Moralee Division table at this early stage of the season.
There was a bit of steam letting off right at the end with under a minute left on the clock as Wild’s Joe Greaves got involved in an enthusiastic punch up with Zachary Yokoyama of the Lions, which resulted in both of them being sent to the penalty box for the last few seconds of the game.
No sooner had this “bout” finished then Jay Robinson left the Wild bench for what appeared to be a preorchestrated tussle with Lions’ Ben Wilson and, once the pair of them had fallen to the ice in a heap, they were both banished to the dressing rooms.
Ironically enough, the game had not been overly rough and the 100 minutes dished out for those 4 players at the end accounted for all but 12 of the total penalties handed out for the whole game.
The Wild now have three more away games:
Saturday 25th September – away @ Sheffield Scimitars (NIHL Midlands Cup)
Sunday 3rd October – away @ Billingham Stars
& Saturday 9th October – away @ Solway Sharks
before their next appearance at home on Sunday 10th October, when they will take on Sheffield in the Cup at Planet Ice Widnes.