The Bolts faced off early Saturday morning against a much fancied Oxford Shooting Stars side at their home barn of Planet ice Milton Keynes.

The First period started extremely positively for the Bolts when on their first shift top Finnish Defenceman Miika “RPG” Ilkko struck from the blue line past the Oxford nettie to put the Bolts up 1 – 0 and he then netted another one soon after to put the Bolts up 2 – 0. The Oxford side then dug in scoring 4 unanswered goals to put the Oxfordshire side 2 – 4 up until very late in the first the Bolts pulled a late goal back through Russian import Anatoly Obhukov to close the period 3 – 4 in favour of the visitors.

The second period saw both sides very evenly matched trading goals with Bolts Andy Watt scoring two with both assists coming from Andy Crichton-Smith. Even scoring two the Bolts struggled to put shots on goal maintaining possession but the Oxford D being very tight and stingy allowing only 4 shots on Ben Robinson. The second period closed seeing a desperate lunge from rookie Mark “Lumberjack” Thornton conceding a tripping penalty rather than let the Oxford Star proceed on Bolts nettie Jay Bazzone who faced 46 shots in the whole game. The period closed with Oxford ahead by 5 – 6.

The third was again a very tight affair with both sides working extremely hard to gain dominance but the Oxford side regained a 2 goal lead to put them 5 – 7 up. The Bolts continued to pressure on the Stars with 18 shots on goal in the third but only coming up with one goal with less than 5 minutes remaining from Jamie Hooper to bring the score closer at 6 – 7.

Bolts continued to pile the pressure on even pulling the goalie with 30 seconds left to force the draw but it proved fruitless. The game closed at 6 – 7 in favour of the visitors in which was a very even, competitive and well played game from both sides.

Mom – Jay Bazzone