What a weekend...PART ONE!

Now that my voice is almost back to normal, namely I am not talking like Johnny Vegas from St. Helens and looking for Monkey, it's time to give my personal recap on what was an absolute immense weekend. 2 massive games and 2 massive results were needed. As you know we are now champions but from my eyes how did it unfold? Sit back and enjoy the ride, as you get to find what I went through as a hardened fan. It really was something special...

Welcome to Part One of "What A Weekend!"

In fact this all started Thursday at 6pm when I finished work. Clocked out on time and onto the X5 bus to S26 to rendezvous with Mr FrozenSteelMNL himself. It was about this time that I heard the sad news about Amy. Despite being on a packed bus, my emotions took hold and I admit I cried my eyes. Amy was a member of the hockey family, and despite the illness, always looked upbeat whenever I saw her around. She will never be forgotten. Fly free sweet angel...

Therefore the mood arriving in S26 was sombre as opposed to the usual happy go lucky one. However both myself and Alan realised we could not allow ourselves to get depressed too much so we broke out the cheesiest of the cheesy music courtesy of my laptop. The laughter returned and we're sure that Amy would have approved, in fact she would have been laughing too I guess. Well if you had heard some of the songs played, you would have been left thinking "Oh my days!"

Friday soon came around and with it, the travel down for the day of destiny - part one. Having checked into the hotel early afternoon, we hit Hooters as usual and meeting up with members of Rock The Block. One substantial meal demolished later, it was back to the hotel to get changed for the game. The game was a high intensity one, with Sam Oakford scoring the first period's only goal. When Greg "Juice" Jacina made it 2-0 early in the second, you could have been forgiven that the defence would collapse like it had many times before in the NIC. But the team pulled themselves together and goals from Forney and O'Connor (the latter, a superb shorthanded effort assisted by the ever energetic Tyler Mosienko) had us level after 40 minutes.

The game went from end to end with both sides pushing for the all important next goal. Panthers regained the lead just over 7 minutes from the end, captain Brandon Benedict firing across Josh Unice (who was having another great game) although it appeared that officials missed a clear push on Tyler in the build-up. We had to dig deep again, with time against us. But cometh the man, cometh the moment. Enter Mathieu Roy (who should be an absolute shoe-in for EIHL MVP), clearly injured, in the 58th minute at the right moment to net the rebound after Modig had saved from Forney initially. Both went for it and as it looked like penalty shots would happened, Mosey was whistled for a tripping call and 28 seconds remained. G used his time-out to perfection, the guys set it and again Roy was in the right place again - the puck rolling into the net in slow motion. We went bananas!

On a personal level, my voice was ruined but I was past caring. I was so overjoyed! I will go along and say it ranks amongst the best moments I have experienced in hockey in the years I have been watching this great game. Amy had definitely been shining on our hockey team on the Friday, could we finish the job in the House Of Steel in less than 24 hours? That was the plan, Cardiff lay in wait for us. Destiny was calling Sheffield Steelers.

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