Toothless Lions given a mauling

WITH five first team players missing the Lions failed to build on their early season draw against Peterborough, as they crashed to a heavy defeat against the Islanders.

The visitors missing Romanas Fedotovas, Ben Williams, Paul O'Neill, Andy Watt and Michael Jacobs always faced an uphill battle and it was'nt long before they were behind.

Kristian Simo opened the scoring for the home side at 06:11 with a short-handed goal, before adding a second three minutes later via a powerplay effort as Andrzej Maslak sat out two-minutes for hooking.

Lee Valley held up well, however, and it wasn't until 18:48 that David Micheli scored the first of his hat-trick goals.

The hosts stepped up a gear further in the second period with the Islanders' putting five more goals past Lions netminder Stefan Nubert.

Having faced 16 shots in the first period and 19 in the second, Lions coach Serge Smolenko decided that Nubert had taken enough of a pounding and opted to rest him in favour of Glen Jackson for the final period.

Jackson had been out of action through injury since December so to return to the ice in a game where the Lions were already 8-0 down was somewhat daunting.

The new man's luck was no better than Nubert's and he faced a barrage of 27 shots in 20 minutes. Even when three or more Lions were assisting in front of the net Peterborough shots still found their way through on five occasions.

And at 34:15 there was little respite in the form of fisticuffs entertainment from James Hatfull and Peterborough's Stuart Coleman, who were both handed match bans.

Play eventually resumed and just when it looked like Islanders' netminder Kerry Herring was set to achieve a shut-out Maslak broke away from the pack to score Lions' only goal of the match, assists going to Mark Swaine and Stas Profokiev.

Lee Valley's last home game of the 2006/07 season is on Saturday when they face Oxford City Stars, face-off 5.30pm.

Free match tickets are available via the club's website at www.leevalleylions. co.uk