Netminders Eamon McAdam and Antti Karjalainen each posted clean sheets as the opening leg of the Cup semi final at Glasgow Clan was played to a scoreless draw heading to the 2nd leg at Guildford on February 7th.
The highlight of a scoreless opening frame was a Flames powerplay, but they couldn’t convert. The scoring situation carried over into the 2nd where Clan went to their powerplay a couple of times and also failed to get the aggregate scoring underway.
In the final set, Flames struck out on another powerplay before Clan spent more than a minute with a 5 on 3 advantage with about 5 minutes to go, but neither could they get the break before time wound down with shutouts at both ends of the rink.
McAdam made 24 saves, while Karjalainen made 19.
“I thought overall we played a pretty good game,” said Paul Dixon, “but it was the kind of tight game you might expect for an important semi-final aggregate start when every goal is so meaningful.”
“Both teams did a lot of good things to limit chances, sticks in lanes, shots blocked, keeping guys outside and both teams had outstanding goaltending.”
“The one area where it is a lot more difficult to take away some of the chances is on the powerplay and we are disappointed that we couldn’t make something happen with those, and I am sure Glasgow was disappointed in the same way from their perspective.”
“The objective with an aggregate count is to still be in it after the 1st leg and here we are going into a 2nd leg where the game will count for the whole series and that should be a pretty exciting evening.”
