Stars Douse the Blaze in Challenge Match

Final Score - Oxford 3 : Coventry 2

Sunday 17 August 2008

Oxford Stars faced the ENL North Coventry Blaze at the Skydome on Sunday in front of a bumper summer crowd of 400. Recent summer signings Richard Wojciak, Alan Armour and Andrew Shurmer were all on show, but they were without last years top scorer Dean Francis and defencemen Skaife and Carr both through injury. Joel Poiriers Blaze team were without big centreman Todd and new import signing Antti Khovakka.

The game started at a fast and furious pace with a number of big hits being made inside the first minute, referee Ian Hayden then penalised Stars Featherstone and Blaze Jones for roughing at 1 minute and 1 second. The first goal came at just over 4 minutes as Stars conceded a short handed goal against the run of play, Tom Ledgard took advantage of some pre-season confusion on the Oxford powerplay to net past James Skaife. This spurred the Oxford side on as they had a flurry of chances and the lions share of possession which eventually payed off at 12:10 as Andrew Shurmer picked up a pass from Jacob Smith to glide up the ice un-challenged on the powerplay and cooly slot home from wide on the boards. The period ended with both teams locked at 1-1, Oxford narrowly outshooting the Blaze 12-11 but having the better of the chances from in close and heavy possession on the powerplay. Stars, who were already missing a number of key players found themselves without their power forward Grant ‘Ace’ Bailey mid way though the 1st for the rest of the game with a broken skate blade. This enabled young guns Dax Hedges, Jacob Smith and Joe Oliver the chance to step up and shine. Hedges, taking his first strides in a competitive senior match eventually went on to collect the Man of the Match award after showing some great effort and determination on the wing.

Stars took the lead again mid-way through the 2nd period as Armour drove wide, riding two hard hits in the corner to slide the puck out front to Edwards who cleverly dropped it to the back post gifting Skipper Elliott the empty net from a tight angle. Coach Morvan will be pleased with the opportunity to try out different line combinations and practice the special teams. However, this was always going to be a low scoring game with a mixture of pre-season cobwebs combined with some resolute defending by both teams. Stars always looked capable going forward and at times even defencemen Cox, Featherstone and Wojciak had some silky runs up the ice.

Both teams changed netminders for the 3rd period giving their back-ups some valuable ice time. McGurk in the Oxford net was called into action early on as Coventry’s promising D-man Tom Pease jinxed his way in from the blueline to stuff it top shelf and tie the game. This again pushed the travelling Stars on, although they missed a number of golden opportunities to take the game. Arguably the best chance came as Mark Krater skated in on a breakaway then passed off at the last minute to Andy Cox who was unable to beat the sprawling Blaze keeper Laverick. The game winner finally came at 51:35 as first line combination of Elliott, Armour and Edwards dazzled again with some slick tic-tac-toe passing, this time being finished off easily by Edwards. The lead never really looked like being lost from that point even though Blaze pushed on hard. This was a fast paced challenge match against a much improved Coventry team, Stars will be happy with the win and can take a number of positives points away to work on in the lead up to the new season.

Scorers:-

Oxford: Darren Elliott 1, Joe Edwards 1+1, Andrew Shurmer 1+0, Alan Armour 0+2, Jacob Smith 0+1

Netminding:-

Oxford: Skaife 19 (1/19) McGurk 5 (1/5)

Man of the Match

Dax Hedges

Photography

With special thanks to Coventry's photographer Mark Tredgold for his photos, more can be found in the gallery section of our website. His website is www.tredders.com for more information.