Lightning edge it on night for netminders

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Bison 0 Milton Keynes Lightning 1

22/10/11

Milton Keynes Lightning laid down their title marker with a gritty performance resulting in this narrow road win at Planet Ice last night. Championship winners 2 years ago, they finished in a disappointing mid table position last season, but they are now looking much more like a team capable of emulating that title success of 2009. And they can thank their young goaltender, Alex Mettam, who produced some fantastic saves and stood solid as a rock. His opposite number, Matt Colclough, can consider himself unlucky to record a 0.95 + save percentage and still end up on the losing side.

Lightning took the lead after 13 minutes with a short handed goal. With Kentish man Michael Wales, a player weighing 69 Kg, and Canadian Nick Poole, weighing a full 10 Kg heavier than his team mate, both in the box, Lightning had to defend a 5 on 3 for 39 seconds. This they did and after Wales had returned to the ice to see out the 5 on 4 powerplay things went horribly awry for Bison. A defensive slip let in “A” man Leigh Jameson and he 5-holed the unfortunate Matt Colclough who just wasn’t quick enough with his butterfly. It’s always disappointing to concede a short hander.

Bison thought they had equalised with only 3 seconds of the power play remaining. The puck found the net as the goal moved backwards, but the referee ruled that the net was off its moorings before the puck crossed the line and no goal it was. It was a somewhat surreal situation with the Bison players, unaware of the referee’s decision, continuing to celebrate and the scoreboard firmly stuck on “0”.

The second period saw no more goals, but there were plenty of chances at both ends. However, the goal tenders stood rock solid. Slovak cannon, Marcel Petran, keen to make amends for his defensive slip which led to the Lightning goal, showed his superb skating skills by slicing through the Lightning defense, but shot high. With only 6 seconds of the period remaining, Marcel became involved in an ugly exchange of contrary opinions with the abrasive Michael Wales, a well known agent provocateur, who had been niggling away at Petran for the whole game. The Slovak had made a great job of ignoring the MK man’s gamesmanship until then. Alas he did not possess the patience of Job and the situation eventually brewed up into a full blown unsavoury incident with pushing, shoving and verbals. No blows were exchanged, but the argy-bargy was enough to attract a 2 minutes penalty for each for “roughing”. Didn’t look very rough to me. One can only speculate on how Job would have coped with Mr. Wales.

Seven minutes into the third, Marek Dubec, playing his last game on home ice for the Bison, received a bizarre penalty for “boarding”, which looked like a legal mid ice check with no boards involved to me. However, the referee knew better. During the resultant power play, the crowd were treated to a superb cameo of defensive play by Dan Harris. Outnumbered 2 to 1 in the left hand channel he successfully blocked the way to goal for what seemed like half the evening. I hope there were some young aspiring defensemen in the crowd who saw this because it really was text book stuff. It was a perfect illustration that a blueliner doesn’t have to touch the puck to make a telling contribution. Dan made himself as large as possible with superb positioning, sometimes upright, sometimes down on one knee, sometimes with stick laid down on the ice as if to say “Only a saucer pass over my stick will do.” He didn’t rashly charge in with a reckless tackle and what he did worked superbly. They did not get the puck past him. Well done, Dan. 10 out of 10.

Halfway through the period Bison’s best chance fell to bandana wearing, Canadian colossus, Steve Moria. He received a pass from behind the goal line and seemed only to have to smash the puck into an empty net with Mettam leaving a huge gap between himself and the post. However Moria’s drilled shot was brilliantly saved by the young netman, who then completed a double save by stopping the shot smashed in from the rebound.

At the other end, Colclough, also enjoying a great game, did make an uncharacteristic but hideous error by batting the puck out wide straight to Adam Carr, whose shot back flashed across the face of the goal and missed the target to save Matt’s blushes.

Three minutes from time, Marek Dubec had a chance to mark his last game with a landmark equaliser. He raced clear, bore down on Mettam, but failed to find a way past the Lightning goaltender, who looked as impregnable as the Maginot Line, the Great Wall of China and Fatty Arbuckle all rolled into one.

The final period was marked by several incidents of fractious behaviour, following on from a number of similar differences of opinion in the second as well as the Petran/Wales encounter, but in all cases the conflagrations went no further than pushing and shoving. It had seemed almost a certainty that Chris Wiggins would get involved in another fight, but this didn’t happen.

Despite outshooting Lightning by 16-6 in the final period, Bison could not find a way through and were reduced to the risky business of pulling their goaltender with the clock ticking down. Hearts were in Bison mouths as Lightning missed an empty net chance, but Bison failed to capitalise on the 6 on 5 and the buzzer (such an awful sound when you’re losing) ended the night’s disappointment.