 |
| Mayhem defend at Sheffield (Photo by Roksana Oniszczuk) |
Saturday 27th June 2026 – BPIHL Match #8: Sheffield Steelkings 10 – Mayhem 0
The Mayhem sledge team slumped to a 10-0 defeat away to league leaders
Sheffield Steelkings at iceSheffield on Saturday.
The two teams had already met in a home game at Widnes three weeks
earlier, which had resulted in a 0-3 shut-out for the defending champions and,
with the Mayhem travelling to the Steel City with a short bench and a number of
regular players missing, this game always seemed likely to represent a bit of a
challenge.
The plucky Mayhem were up against it right from the start and the
Steelkings opened the scoring after just 37 seconds with a goal from Daniel
Clarke.
The hosts doubled their advantage on 4 minutes with a goal from Gary
Farmer but, despite outshooting the Mayhem by 16 to 1 in the first period, thanks
to some resolute defending, the score remained 2-0 at the first break.
Mayhem netminder Daniel Hartshorn was kept busy throughout the game and
put in another superb performance in the second period to limit the Steelkings
to just 1 goal. That fell to Clarke,
again, on 19 minutes but, other than that, Hartshorn managed to keep out 12 of
the 13 shots that he faced.
Under the circumstances, to be “only” losing 3-0 after two periods to a
full strength Sheffield team was quite commendable but the Mayhem visibly tired
in the third period and the game began to slip away from them.
Ben O’Brien fired in the Steelkings’ fourth goal 44 seconds into the
period and then three more strikes during a two minute spell – one from Clarke
for his hat-trick and then two more from Farmer – put the game well beyond the
Mayhem at 7-0 with 12 minutes still to play.
Three more goals late in the period – one from Max Phillips-Brant and two
more from Gary Farmer for an impressive 5-goal haul – rounded off the scoring
for the game.
Despite the rather one-sided nature of the final period, the Mayhem
actually managed more shots of their own than in the first two periods combined
but were still out-shot by 17-3 and Dan Hartshorn went on to take the MVP award
for his Herculean efforts in keeping the overall score down.
The Steelkings now
have a 2 point lead at the top of the British Para Ice Hockey League table with
the Mayhem and Cardiff Huskies behind them, both on 4 points and separated by
head to head results.
This coming Saturday – 4th July - sees the Mayhem travel to
Sheffield again, to take on Sheffield development team the Steelstings – who are
playing their second game of the season, 6.20pm face off.
The Mayhem are next at home on Saturday 25th July when they
take on the Steelstings in their last home game of the season at Planet Ice
Widnes, 5.25pm face off.
Manchester Mayhem official website: www.manchestermayhem.co.uk
For more information about the British Para Ice Hockey League, check out the official website at www.paraicehockey.co.uk
