A rough start to the pre-season campaign for Peterborough Phantoms as they suffer back-to-back defeats
It was a rough opening weekend of pre-season action for Peterborough Phantoms.
The city side took on National League rivals Romford Raiders in home and away games and lost both times, 6-3 at home and 8-4 on their travels.
Phantoms will hope to show better form in their final pre-season matches against MK Lightning this weekend. The city side are in MK on Saturday (7pm face-off) and at Planet Ice on Sunday (5.30pm).
The home game against Romford saw a host of Phantoms make their debuts for the club, including import trio Matt Hennessey, Adam Berg and Dominik Gabaj, while Ewan Hill faced off against his former side on his debut.
It didn’t get off to the best of starts for Phantoms who found themselves one down inside the opening two minutes. Hennessey was equal to Tjay Anderson’s initial effort, but Barret Kirwin was on hand to dispatch the rebound into the back of the net.
Phantoms drew level at 12:07 after good work from Brad Bowering who took the puck to the corner before feeding Berg who bagged his first goal for the club.
And Phantoms were in front 90 seconds later with a goal from Luke Ferrara who had help from Janne Laakkonen and Dillon Lawrence. It was 3-1 minutes later when Flynn Massie teed up the lively Barni Sari to score at the near post.
But that was the end of the scoring for Phantoms who conceded just before the end of the first period. Romford equalised early in the second period and then took a 4-3 lead into the final session during which they scored twice more.
Phantoms were denied further goals for Ferrara and Hill by excellent goaltending.
The city side struggled from the start in Romford, falling 3-0 down in the first period and it was 4-0 before they got on the scoresheet midway through the match through Hill.
But it was 7-2 by the end of the second period with Phantoms having the consolation at least of winning the final session 2-1. Lawrence, Berg and Sari were the other Phantoms’ scorers.
The National League season for Phantoms starts on the weekend of September 19/20 when they travel to Swindon Wildcats before hosting Basingstoke Bison.