The Guildford Flames ice hockey club stepped onto Slough Jets ice on Thursday night holding down a 4-2 lead in the two leg aggregate cup semi final, but that was by no means the end of the story.

During leg 2, the clubs shared 8 goals, 5 to the Jets, to require overtime, then penalties to settle the aggregate tie which saw the Flames finally secure a championship round berth against Milton Keynes Lightning after unlocking the 7-7 knot with a Lukas Smital winning shot to take a combined 8-7 win.  The opening game of the final will take place at Spectrum on Wednesday, March 17th at 8pm, with leg 2 in Milton Keynes on the 24th.

Peter Poljacek opened the scoring at 17 minutes to pull the Jets to within 1 before the first break.  Early in the 2nd, Paul Dixon evened the game night score on the powerplay and re-stored the 2 goal aggregate lead.  The Jets got it back to 1, though, with a Ciaran Long strike at 35:08 to leave them within striking distance ahead of the final session.  Trading 3rd period blows like a couple of heavyweight boxers, the Jets hit first inside 3 minutes when Dan Davies gave them a 3-1 match lead, but Rick Plant called ‘advantage Flames’ just 27 seconds later to make it 3-2; a 6-5 combined score.  Ryan Watt replied at 54:31 to level it again before another Plant goal at 57:21 gave the travelling Flames yet another 1 goal advantage and what looked like a win.  With time ticking down, just 31 seconds after the Flames go ahead marker in fact, a desperate Jets side evened things for the final time with another Long goal to take a 5-3 win on the night, only to ultimately fall short of their objective in the tiebreaking procedure.

Flames Head Coach Paul Dixon was pleased with the advancement:

“About a year ago we entered leg 2 of the cup final with a lead and then lost the trophy in Peterborough.  Winning the semi final this time around against Slough gives us another crack at that and we are very excited to have that opportunity at this stage of the competition.  Thankfully we went to Slough with a lead because they brought everything they had to knock us out and you don’t get much closer than a penalty shootout to decide who moves on.  It is a strange feeling to lose the match but still have an opportunity to win the event, but you take success in whatever form it comes.  We played well against Milton Keynes the last time out so we feel we can give them a run.  They have a great team.  They belong at the top of the league table and they are no doubt favorites to win the cup but we are looking forward to an intense 2 leg final to see what we can do about bringing it back to Guildford.”

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