Lightning bounce back with great cup win
Milton Keynes Lightning have one skate in the final of the English Premier League Knockout Cup after a stunning performance saw them to a 6-3 win at Guildford Flames on Wednesday night.
Lightning put aside their recent poor form to show what they are really capable of as they took a 6-1 lead at one stage before two late Flames goals gave the Surrey side hope for the second leg at Planet Ice on Thursday next week at 7.45pm.
With Lightning back at full strength following the return from injury of Michael Wales it was Ales Parez who set up Gary Clarke to open the scoring after just 4mins 19secs.
Parez got the second after 15mins 5secs only three seconds into a powerplay resulting from a tripping call on Flames' Rick Skene.
Nick Poole was next to the penalty box after he was caught hooking and that gave Flames the chance to register with the man advantage – Milos Melicherik the supplier for Taras Foremsky to net at 17mins 15secs.
But if Flames thought that was the start of their fightback they were wrong. – However it took until 9mins 30secs into the second session for Clarke to make the tally 3-1 – Parez again the provider as the visitors were on a powerplay following Vinny Zavoral's interference call.
Lightning successfully defended a short-handed spell with Mikko Skinnari in the sin bin for interference before the Finn played his part in setting up a powerplay goal for Parez at 34mins exactly with Zavoral sitting out a tripping call.
Just one minute 22 seconds later Nick Poole added to Flames' woes with Lightning's fifth of the evening as the team led 5-1 at the second break.
By now Lightning were well on top and Clarke helped out as Ross Bowers fired home goal number six at 43mins 20secs.
Late strikes by Zavoral in the 53rd minute and Neil Liddiard in the 56th gave some respectability to the score as far as Flames were concerned but Lightning's confidence must have been boosted by this result.
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Weather for Milton Keynes
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: East
