News

Phoenix lose but pride restored

Thursday, 11th December 2003

Manchester Phoenix lost in Belfast on Thursday evening but restored some of their pride so badly dented last weekend in Coventry.

Mike Morin was the Phoenix hero in the Odyssey Arena scoring twice and assisting on the other two Phoenix goals to earn himself the Man of the Match accolade. Dwight Parrish and David Kozier were the other scorers while captain George Awada tallied three assists.

Phoenix head coach Rick Brebant said, “I thought we played some pretty good hockey tonight, by and large, we responded well to the disappointment of last weekend and if we hadn’t made some silly mistakes we might have got something from tonight. Mike was superb tonight and we got better games from David (Kozier), George (Awada) and I thought Dwight Parrish had a very good game too.”

Brebant continued, “It was a better performance, but there are still some issues to address and areas of our play that have to be corrected one way or the other, and we need to work out the answers very quickly. We may have to bring in a fresh face or two to shake things up and if that is what it takes then that is what will be done. I won’t deny that we’ve been taking a look at who may be available and those decisions may yet be made.”

Phoenix will play an exhibition game on Saturday in Milton Keynes against the English Premier League side MK Lightning and Brebant noted, “It’s important that we keep skating going into Sunday’s clash with the Steelers. We couldn’t get any practise ice on Saturday so whilst we could do without the travel, the game against the Lightning will very much serve a purpose.”