Autocraft Telford Tigers played their final home challenge game of the pre-season against Peterborough on Saturday night. Tigers came into the game having lost both games the previous weekend against Swindon Wildcats and only managed to score one goal in the two games.
Tigers were boosted by the addition of Zachary Yokoyama who missed both the games against Swindon and Joe Aston was also added to the line up after his return to the club was confirmed last week.
Tigers made a disastrous start to the game and found themselves behind in the opening minute of the contest as Scott Robson scored for the visitors, batting the puck into the net from close range.
Midway through the first period the Phantoms doubled their lead. Luke Ferrara shooting low to Brad Day’s left after being set up by Nathan Salem.
Tigers started the second period in better form and were unlucky a couple of times not to score. But the team persevered and five minutes from the break, finally got on the score sheet. Louie Newell set up last season’s top scorer Vladimir Luka to halve the deficit.
An even third period saw both teams trade chances and with eight minutes of the game left the home side were level. With Peterborough’s Austin Mitchell-King in the penalty box the Tigers’ power play unit drew the scores level. Scott McKenzie setting up Yokoyama for his first goal for the club.
With the game seemingly heading towards overtime, there was a sting in the tail for Telford when the visitors took the lead with just over a minute of the game left. Janne Laakkonen scoring for the Phantoms. With time ticking away Day was pulled from goal to give Telford an extra attacker but this just allowed Peterborough to seal the game with an empty net goal from Cam Hough.
Tigers fall to their third straight pre-season defeat despite a much improved performance.
Final Score: Autocraft Telford Tigers 2 Peterborough Phantoms 4.
Scorers: Vladimir Luka and Zachary Yokoyama.
Man of the match: Louie Newell.
After the game Head Coach Tom Watkins, commented, “That was a much improved performance. We focused on a few key areas in practice this week and wanted to be stronger in our face offs, our defensive zone coverage and neutral zone forechecking. Those areas were where we were pretty solid tonight. I thought the first period saw Peterborough start faster than us but we found our legs and in the second and third periods we moved the puck well, had plenty of offensive zone time and created chances. We have plenty to build on and can take that into the next game.”
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