News Release
23/01/2012

12 points back of the league leading Flames just over a month ago, the Manchester Phoenix handed Surrey’s team a 4-1 road defeat on Saturday night, their 9^th win on the bounce, to pull within a win of a deadlock on the table summit they claimed last season.  The result meant that 24 hours later the Flames, for the 2^nd time this month, faced the task of holding the league lead in head to head competition against a club willing and able to at least gain a shared portion of the table’s best position depending on the outcome.  Like the earlier occasion, Spectrum’s tenants responded to the challenge; this time collecting a 5-2 win over Phoenix, remaining 3 points clear at the top of the table.   

In the opener, Phoenix took a lead less than halfway through the 1^st thanks to a Ben Wood marker.  With Matt Towe in the penalty box a Ladislav Harabin powerplay goal doubled their advantage ahead of the break.   A scoreless middle frame had the travellers looking for an early period reply on the comeback trail in the final 20 minutes.  An early goal was awarded but rather than cut the lead in half, it was the home side who made it a 3 goal margin through Juraj Faith just 25 seconds after the re-start.  Slava Koulikov spread the gap a bit further with a powerplay goal at 51:03.  David Savage finally got one back for the Flames less than 4 minutes from time to mark the only blemish on a 39 save Steve Fone performance. 

Back on home ice on Sunday, David Longstaff popped the cork on the evening’s offence when he slipped a puck through the legs of Steve Fone just 39 seconds in.  About 12 minutes later Matt Towe delivered a perfect cross ice pass to Greg Chambers who converted the 2 on 1 break when he one timed the puck into an open cage.  With time ticking away in the period, Juraj Faith got the Phoenix on the board to cut the lead in half.  Late in the middle session, Rick Plant did the heavy lifting when he threw a check behind the goal line to force a turnover that ended up on the stick of David Savage who collected the puck before shifting just enough to slip a backhand past Fone while re-storing the 2 goal margin.  The Phoenix pulled within 1 less than 5 minutes into the 3^rd when Tom Duggan scored, but a pair of Flames replies ensured the win.  Nathan Rempel netted at 52:35 before Ben Campbell iced it on a breakaway in the 59^th minute. 

Flames Head Coach Paul Dixon looked back at the results

“Taking the whole weekend into account, I think we come away pretty pleased with how things turned out.  Having said that, we left Manchester on Saturday night very pretty disappointed group.  They have clawed there way back into serious league contention and when you have a chance on the road to put some distance between you and a contender like that you are almost desperate to make it happen.  It was by no means our worst performance of the season despite the outcome.  We did some good things and dominated the shot count, especially the 2^nd period when we missed many opportunities to pull even or even jump ahead.  It was really a situation where some very glaring errors were directly responsible for goals that we just could not get back.  They scored relatively early and we were in catch up mode all night.  As luck would have it Steve Fone had an outstanding evening and when you trail like that against a hot netminder it often is not going to work out.  The great news is that every guy turned up on Sunday with that extra determination.  It is a lot of pressure to be in the position of potentially giving up a share of the lead and we took the game to them right from the opening faceoff.  Fortunately, we popped an early goal and that sort of set the tone for a really strong group effort that got a key result.”

Photo attached of Mark Lee stopping a Martin Cingel attempt on Sunday.