After a couple of tough losses in the opening weekend of the NIHL Spring Cup, the second weekend of action saw the Wildcats take their first two wins of the season thanks to a 6-2 victory on Saturday afternoon. Before an overtime winner from Aaron Nell sealed the 4-point-weekend with a 5-4 win on Sunday, both against the Bees IHC.
Saturday was the first game of the tournament for the Bees and they had been boosted with the arrival of Elite league trio Ciaran Long, Josh Waller, and Lewis Hook as well as the addition of well-known power forward Bobby Chamberlain.
The first highlight of the game was one not to be missed for young Wildcats forward Jack Goodchild. The Cats #4 opened the scoring, and his first professional goal, at 13:01. It proved to be the only goal of the opening stanza as he Cats started off with a 1-0 lead at the end of the first period. The Bees opened their account for the tournament when Josh Waller found room from a tight angle to tie the game up at one.
The game was tied for only 17 seconds before Toms Rutkis fired a shot into the corner of the goal with the assists going to Ben Davies and Ben Nethersell. Later in the middle period, Reed Sayers got his second goal of the tournament when he pounced on a redirected shot and slid the puck into the empty net. There was still time to extend the Cats lead to 3 goals at 39:54 when Josh Batch found room through a screen to open his account with a nice powerplay goal, as the period came to a close with the home side holding a 4-1 lead.
The Wildcats continued to pile the pressure on in the third period, and at 47:57 Balint Pakozdi continued his good run of form and increased the lead to four goals. There was one final goal for the Wildcats when a loose play from the Bees saw Jordan Kelsall break down the right-wing before firing a pass over to Matthew Myers who slid the puck through the 5-hole of Danny Milton and made it 6-1.
There was time for the Bees to get a late consolation goal when Josh Kelly scored his first for the Bees as the game came to a close with a 6-2 result and two points in the bag.
On Sunday afternoon the Wildcats had a strong middle period and a late overtime winner to complete the four-point weekend. With Jordan Marr in the pipes, the visitors fell behind in the first period with a score of 2-1 with Vanya Antonov & Ed Bradley scoring for the Bees and Floyd Taylor getting the first goal for the Cats.
In the middle stanza the Bees again scored the opening goal through Bobby Chamberlain but then three unanswered goals from Toms Rutkis, Balint Pakozdi & Josh Batch saw the Wildcats enter the middle period break with a 3-4 lead. In the final period, the Bees scored within the opening minute through a bizarre set of deflections from a Stuart Mogg shot to tie the game up at 40:45.
There would be no further goals for either side until the overtime period saw Josh Batch and Tomasz Malasinski link up to find an unmarked Aaron Nell on hand to fire home and secure the four-point weekend for the Wildcats.
With the week off this weekend, the Wildcat’s attention will turn to the weekend 6th/7th March with a doubleheader of the Telford Tigers.
