Final Score - Solihull 3 : 10 Oxford

13th January 2008

Barons Left Seeing Stars

On a wet and thoroughly miserable night the Oxford City Stars made the trip up to the midlands to take on the Solihull Barons at Hobs Moat Road ice arena.

Oxford coach Darryl Morvan had to adjust his lines to take in to account suspensions earned by Grant Bailey, Will Skaife and Jacob Smith in the previous weeks victory over Coventry.

In front of a reasonable crowd the Stars came out flying putting the Solihull defence under pressure and forcing errors from their defencemen. Within three minutes the hard work from the visitors paid off when Nick Oliver set up Alan Green to squeeze the puck past Foley in the Solihull goal. Despite this good start the Stars could not finish their chances and Solihull began to enjoy a period of possesion but lacked a cutting edge in the final third. The Stars scored a vital second goal with two minutes remaining in the period when Andy Cox passed to Darren Elliott down the left wing and the Stars skipper's smart wrist shot rippled the top corner of the net.

The second period saw Solihull give Oxford a taste of their own medicine and with only 17 seconds gone a breakaway goal saw Neil Adams ghost behind the Oxford defencemen and finish his one on one with Skaife in the Stars goal. This gave the home supporters something to cheer about and the atmosphere started to build. Solihull had a further breakaway only minutes later but this time Skaife came out on top with a good save. With Solihull well and truly revitalised it wasnt really a shock when they equalised through import Erik Bakalar when he found plenty of space in front of the Oxford goal. With the Stars on the ropes they found respite when experienced Solihull player Stephen Doyle received a two minute holding penalty only to see the Stars score on the powerplay with a great finish from Kent Johnson in front of the net after slick passing by Dean Francis and Nick Eden. Twenty seconds later Johnson picked up the puck in the neutral zone and jinked past three Solihull players before racing towards Foley and faking the shot before finishing on his backhand to send the small band of supporters from Oxford into dreamland. Solihull then changed their goalie with Young replacing Foley between the pipes. The goalie had a nightmare start when he failed to hold a nearpost shot from Alan Green and Nick Oliver poked the puck past him. With Richard Taylor sitting a high sticking penalty for Solihull, Oxford scored on the powerplay again this time through Darren Elliott grabbing his second of the night. A minute later the Solihull goalie let in a howler when he got his angles all wrong and Oxford rookie Joe Edwards had his head up and finished in a bizarre fashion from the right hand side to make it 7-2 Stars. Then a bizarre moment occured which effectively ended Solihull's chances of a comeback. With Skaife in the Oxford goal freezing the puck, Stephen Doyle pushed Sam Broughton on to the ice without provocation and then after speaking with the referee to find out he had a penalty, Doyle then skated round and hurled the pint sized Oxford forward to the floor and started pummeling him despite Broughton turtling and showing no intention to fight. Doyle then screamed at his own bench and then was sent to the locker room in front of a home crowd stunned in to silence. The end result was that Oxford now had a twelve minute powerplay and Solihull were forced to defend it. With 50 seconds left in the second period Lee Featherstone passed the puck down low to Darren Elliott who slid the puck to Dave Carr in the slot and his slapshot flew in to the bottom right hand corner of the goal.

At 8-2 up and six minutes of powerplay the City Stars skated out in the third knowing they just had to keep it tight for the remainder of the game. With five minutes gone and after a pretty lacklustre powerplay the Stars finally added to their lead when Kent Johnson passed to Dean Francis and his slapshot nearly took the roof of the net off to make it 9-2.

Solihull managed to kill off the remainder of the powerplay and they gave their fans something to shout about with 9 minutes gone in the period when Richard Taylor scored past Stars goalie Kevin McGurk who had replaced James Skaife only a few minutes earlier. If Solihull fans thought that their team were going to grab the last word, the Stars had other ideas and from a Nick Oliver face off, Dave Carr's first time snap shot rebounded off Young to Alan Green who made no mistake. Strangely Solihull improved slightly in the last ten minutes of the game and McGurk was called upon to make a few saves but by then the contest was effectively over and Oxford left with a convincing away win over a Solihull team that had been improving dramatically in recent weeks.

Played:

Oxford - Darren Elliott 2+3 Kent Johnson 2+2 Alan Green 2+2 Nick Oliver 1+3 Dean Francis 1+3 David Carr 1+0 Joe Edwards 1+0 Nick Eden 0+1

Solihull - Neil Adams 1+1 Erik Bakalar 1+0 Richard Taylor 1+0 Stephen Rowlands 0+1Ed Slater 0+1 Andrew Howarth 0+1

Penalties:

Oxford - Cox 2 mins , Featherstone 2 mins , Johnson 2 mins , J Oliver 2 mins

Solihull - Doyle 54 mins , Howarth 2 mins , Brindle 2 mins , Knight 2 mins , Perks 2 mins, Rowlands 2 mins , Eley 2 mins , Taylor 2 mins

Netminding:

Oxford Skaife 32 shots 2 goals against Mcgurk 10 shots 1 goal against

Referee

Evans

Also played:

Krater, Broughton, Knightley