THIS weekend the TSI World Bracknell Bees continue their season meeting the second and third placed teams in the National League.
On Saturday the Bees head to Bretton to face the Peterborough Phantoms. Coached by Slava Koulikov, his team this year sit in third place.
The Phantoms head into the weekend one of only two teams in the league with a perfect 5-0 record from their last five games. That’s the exact same statistic as Swindon headed into last weekend with before the Bees broke their streak!
Ales Padelek leads the offensive output for the team with 29+30 to his name from 39 games with Petr Stepanek following recording 23+31 from 36 games and Martins Susters next with 27+27 from 36 games.
The Phantoms are also strong defensively and have a good netminding combo as well with Jordan Marr and Ryan Bainborough both available for selection.
On Sunday the Swindon Wildcats come to the Hive for the final regular season meeting of these two teams. Until last weekend the Wildcats were closing the gap on the league leading Tigers but with losses to the Bees and Phantoms their title race stalled.
The Wildcats have Renny Marr taking the majority of starts and up front have Tomas Malasinki lining up with Aaron Nell. The potent duo have more than enough talent and firepower around them to make the Wildcats a testing proposition either in Swindon or on the road.
Nell (75 points) and Malasinki (64 points) lead the team in points production with Chris Jones, Edgars Bebris and Sam Bullas just behind.
There’s no easy weekends in the NIHL National and Head Coach Doug Sheppard is looking forward to the upcoming weekend; “We have another tough weekend ahead starting with on form Peterborough. Sunday we’re back at the Hive to face Swindon. We owe our fans a much better performance on home ice this weekend.”
Bees play in Peterborough on Saturday night with a 7pm face-off. The Bees are then on home ice the following evening against Swindon with a 5.30p
