Sunday 19th February – Moralee Division
Sheffield Scimitars 2 – YKK Widnes Wild 7
The YKK sponsored Widnes Wild rounded off a successful 4-point road weekend with a 2-7 win away to Sheffield Scimitars on Sunday.
The league’s bottom club Sheffield have had a terrible season by their own standards and had only won 1 game in 26 starts so it always seemed likely that the Wild would come away from iceSheffield with 2 points – but there are no certainties in ice hockey and games still have to be won.
Widnes took the lead with a goal from long serving crowd favourite Ken Armstrong after 3 minutes. Things settled down after that and, while Widnes had more of the play, it took until the 16th minute for Rhys Edwards to double the advantage with his 3rd goal of the weekend. A strike from Dani Haid with 38 seconds left on the clock put the Wild 0-3 ahead and that remained the score at the first period break.
The second period saw a better display from the home team with a tighter defence and it took until the 29th minute for Widnes to find the net again, with a goal from Mikey Gilbert.
Sheffield finally scored a goal of their own on 31 minutes but another strike late in the second period from Nathan Parkes-Britton restored the 4-goal cushion and Widnes led 1-5 at the second break.
The Scimitars scored first in the third period to slightly narrow the deficit but there was never really much danger of them staging a late comeback. Two more Widnes goals – from Matty Barlow on 43 minutes and player coach Joey Coulter on 46 – rounded off the scoring for the game.
Tensions began to boil over in the latter stages and a series of niggly skirmishes in the last minute of play saw 6 players sent to the penalty box including the Wild’s Will Harper who picked up a game misconduct penalty for fighting on his return to his former home rink.
The Wild have two home games this weekend, taking on Nottingham Lions at Planet Ice Widnes on Saturday - face off 7pm - and then Deeside Dragons on Sunday – 5.30pm face off.
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