Billingham Stars travel to Manchester Minotaurs for their final KD Flavell & Sons-sponsored Northern Cup tie at Altrincham Ice Bowl this afternoon with the end-of-season play-offs looming on the horizon
Billingham Stars travel to Manchester Minotaurs for their final KD Flavell & Sons-sponsored Northern Cup tie at Altrincham Ice Bowl this afternoon with the end-of-season play-offs looming on the horizon.
The Ultimate Windows sponsored Stars will have one eye on the play-offs as they make the journey over the Pennines.
Aside from a couple of possible challenge games, the match will be the last competitive fixture before the end-of-season showpiece and a semi-final against Blackburn.
The Stars will have to do without the unavailable Stephen Wallace, Scott Ward, Garry Dowd and their under-18 contingent as the juniors have a fixture against Sheffield Under-18s to fulfil.
Injury also keeps out Andy Munroe and James Flavell, meaning a certain start between the pipes for Mark Watson.
The absence of Wallace should see much-improved Jack Davies moved up to the first line to partner Michael Bowman and Paul Windridge.
The fixture is the final outing for Manchester of the current campaign. Bottom of the cup group and having finished the league a distant seventh, the Minotaurs showed some early season promise.
But just six wins tells its own story and Manchester will look to rebuild this summer in the hope of mounting a serious challenge.
Their one success story has been the form of Czech import Lukas Zeman, who has remained consistently in the top three league points scorers all season.
A dislocated shoulder will keep out talented defenceman Max Drakeley from the tie.
Billingham director of coaching Terry Ward is looking for a confidence-boosting performance as play-off crunch time approaches.
He said: “We’ll be going hard for the win – there’s no such thing as an easy game in hockey.
“We need some momentum going into the play-offs next month. This is another good chance for some of our returning and fringe players to get ice time and compete hard for their play-off place.
“Manchester will be a tough challenge - their import Zeman has been a real find and has proven himself to be a handful for defences.
“They have quality in goal too. Unfortunately for the Minotaurs it looks like Drakeley will be missing with a shoulder problem, which is good for us as I really rate him.
“Hopefully we will have some challenge games sorted out very soon to keep us fit and focused ahead of the play-offs - we owe Blackburn a proper game after they hammered us while we were very short-benched.
“The lads are already up for the game and looking forward to confining those last two Hawks results to the history books.”
With the Minotaurs and Billingham both out of the running for the Cup, the real action will be up in Scotland where Solway Sharks are taking on Blackburn Hawks for the right to play Sutton Sting in the final in two weeks’ time.
Sutton secured their place with a 6-4 win at Manchester last weekend, leaving Solway and Blackburn – level on 10 points each – to battle it out in a winner-takes-all fixture in Dumfries, starting at 7pm.
Stars’ clash with Manchester Minotaurs this evening gets underway at 5pm. Billingham are in negotiations for a challenge game series ahead of the play-offs and fans are advised to keep their eyes open for details once they have been confirmed.
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