Mayhem Edged Out In Nine-Goal Thriller
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Cardiff Huskies 5 - 4 Manchester Mayhem
Saturday evening saw the Manchester Mayhem lose a nine-goal thriller to the Cardiff Huskies down in South Wales, as the Welsh side gained some revenge for their loss to the Mayhem two weeks ago in Widnes. The hosts were boosted with the return of Tyler Christopher to their line-up, while Manchester were missing a couple of players, but for the first time in a long while, the Mayhem could boast a bigger bench at long last.
Both sides created chances in the opening period, with Karl Nicholson having the game's first chance when he found himself one-on-one with Huskies’ netminder Daniel Hutchinson, but he fired high over the net. Tyler Christopher then had an opportunity himself later on to put Cardiff ahead, but it brought a good save from Dan Hartshorn to repel the puck.
Manchester, you could say, were guilty of not converting their chances, as they managed to get behind the Huskies defence a couple of times with Nicholson once again being stopped by the toes of Hutchinson when on a 2-on-1, then moments later rookie Craig Riley nearly grabbed his first goal for the club, but he couldn’t get much purchase on his shot.
The hosts opened the scoring thanks to a Josh Davies effort that went high over Dan Hartshorn for put the Huskies 1-0 with 8:36 played. Manchester responded well though to going behind, and had more than a shout for an interference call when Karl Nicholson was impeded off the puck, but the officials called nothing.
Tyler Christopher then made it 2-0 when his pass to Jon Le Galloudec led the Huskies player to continue towards goal, but the puck popped out, and Christopher put it past Hartshorn to double their lead. Manchester ended the period with a goal from Karl Nicholson, as the visitors got on the board at 14.37.
Jon Le Galloudec then restored the Huskies' two-goal lead at 25.51 when he got around the Mayhem defence and saw him getting it by the goalie for 3-1. Less than two minutes later, Karl Nicholson pulled it back to within one again, with Dean Lahan pushing the puck towards the back post, and the Manchester man poked it past Hutchinson in the Cardiff goal for 3-2.
In the third and final period, it saw Le Galloudec making it 4-2 and collecting his second of the game, as an attempted clearance saw the puck bounce off a Cardiff player and straight to the Huskies man, whose low shot somehow found the back of the net. Manchester battled on and saw Karl Nicholson completing his hat trick as he found himself skating in space and fired his shot in off the underside of the crossbar to make it 4-3 with over 11 minutes to play.
Tyler Christopher scored what proved to be the winning goal, as he cut across the face of goal and put it under the glove of Dan Hartshorn to make it 5-3 at 41.46 and that looked to be that. But the visitors kept coming back at the home side and didn’t give up, which led to them hitting the pipework for the fourth time in the contest and have the hockey gods saying ‘this isn’t your day’.
Manchester would have the last word in the scoring, as Dean Lahan scored to help to set-up a tense finale with 32.1 seconds left to go in the game and make it 5-4. From the restart it saw them immediately in the Cardiff zone and piling pressure on the Huskies in the dying seconds, but the hosts held out to take the two league points in a cracking encounter between the sides.
Next on the schedule is a home fixture against the Sheffield Steelkings at Widnes this coming Sunday at (17.15pm).
