Well, the league is over and Milton Keynes Lightning have taken the crown following a very consistant performance over the season. The league table now leaves the rankings as:

  1. Milton Keynes Lightning
  2. Slough Jets
  3. Manchester Phoenix
  4. Guildford Flames
  5. Basingstoke Bison
  6. Peterborough Phantoms
  7. Sheffield Scimitars
  8. Swindon Wildcats
  9. Bracknell Bees*
  10. Romford Raiders*

*Did not qualify for the play offs.

The top 8 qualify for the play offs, 1st plays 8th, 2nd plays 7th, 3rd plays 6th and 4th plays 5th. The focus of this piece is the 6th Vs 3rd tie. In this case, Manchester Phoenix Vs Peterborough Phantoms.

On paper you would expect Manchester to cruise this, the record between the two is Manchester 4, Peterborough 2. The last win by Manchester on 7th of March had to go to overtime, and the last two meetings between the teams at Peterborugh have both been won by Peterborough. The goals scored between the two is much closer – Manchester scored 25, Peterborough have scored 23. Equally, the games have been quite close with only one game having a winning margin of more than 2 goals, the December 10th game where the Phantoms ran out as 8-4 winners.

It must be said though, that anecdotally at least, Manchester have been playing better since the departure of Ed Courtney. The last meeting between these two teams was a narrow 2-1 victory for the Phantoms, a game that Manchester needed to win to ensure their 3rd place position. Peterborough have continued to be hit and miss, although on the upside, the hits seems to be pretty impressive and aside from the 5-1 loss to Basingstoke weekend before last, the misses seem to be pretty close.

Going on what the boxing fraternity call the tail of the tape show even less light between the two teams.
In terms of height and weight, Manchester edge both by grams and milimetres with just 530grams and 4mm in height between the two.

The Players

Starting at the back with the Netminders – Steve Fone Vs Stephen Wall
After being at Coventry last year, Stephen Fone has been this year’s starting netminder for Manchester, having played 46 games this season to finish with a GAA of 3.62 and save percentage of 88.5%, although this is a better GAA than Wall, (3.77), Wall’s save % is better at 89.8%, which given how badly the Phantoms have been outshot, especially at the beginning of the season makes the just under 90% save rate all the more impressive. The back ups are just as close with King having a 0.1% better save percentage. Between the pipes, the situation would seem to favour the Phantoms.

Defence is an area of weakness for the Phantoms, certainly at the beginning of the season where a lack of cohesion caused no end of issues. However, as the season has drawn to a close, the Phantoms D has tightened up tremendously. Bolstered by the presence of Doug MacIver the Phantoms D is probably running better now than it did at any point during their treble winning season.
Manchester’s defense has been shaky through the season, underpinned by Hiatian Andre Mattsson and young but highly influential captain Luke Boothroyd. The defense is probably Manchester’s achilles heel but this has improved towards the end of the season with probably their best away performance being at Peterborough a few weeks back restricting the Phantoms to just 2 goals. That said, in the same match, a phenominal performance by Stephen Wall and the much improved defence kept Manchester to 1 goal. So as with the netminding, there’s virtually nothing between them.

Forwards are where Manchester are probably stronger on the face of it, Jaakko Hagelberg, Robert Lachowicz and Tony Hand are the names that most peopel are aware of, however with Stephen Wallace and Greg Wood, Manchester have good depth through the lines, and while his negative reputation has proceeded him, Andre Payette has benefited massively from the change in league to one where his playing ability can come to the fore rather than his fighting prowess, (his PIM have dropped from the record season of 07/08 of 326 to “just” 184 for this season).

However, don’t think it will be all one way, The Phantoms forwards have been hitting the back of the net regularly with Miller, Ziedins and Gough leading the way none of the forwards are particularly goal shy. Where the Phantoms have the advantage is that in play, all of them are happy to play a happy physical checking game and tend not to throw their toys out of the pram when they get back what they give out. Manchesters ;ast appearence at Sheffield tells a slightly different story, however, that was in the league, the play offs are a different kettle of fish all together.

Players to watch

Manchester

Tony Hand is the obvious one along with Jaakko Hagelberg, however it’s the quieter Brits who I feel will win or lose this one for Manchester – especially Adam Walker – you don’t score over 30 goals in this league unless you’re pretty damn good, and over 40 is exceptional – Walker has 43 this season. I would rate him as a bigger threat than Hand or any of the imports Manchester fielded this season including Ed Courtney. In defence, Luke Boothroyd and Andre Mattsson, Mattsson is far more physical but like Payette, is sometimes easier to skate round as Callum Fowler demonstrated back in December.

Peterborough

The Obvious players to watch are Joe Miller and Brent Gough, however, I think the ones to watch will be Calum Fowler, he’s yet to hit the form he showed before his broken jaw, but he has the speed and skill to literally skate rings around Manchester, and the vastly under rated Shaun Yardley and James Spurr. From their position on the “third” line, these two have worked together for many seasons and have managed to slip under most teams radar to be a very dangerous and productive pair.

So I guess the question now is how do I see this playing out? Unlike other three I’d say this one is too close to call. If both teams play to their best possible games I could see this going as far as overtime on Sunday. It could be down to which team blinks first and in that, I’d say 50.000001% Manchester – 49.999999% Phantoms – it’s that close.
We’ll know by Monday I guess.

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