Juraj Faith scores for Phoenix against Peterborough

TONY HAND reckoned Manchester Phoenix showed distinct signs of improvement despite going down in a penalty shoot-out to Telford Tigers.

And the Phoenix player-coach was happy to settle for a three-point weekend after Saturday’s 5-0 win over Peterborough in Altrincham.

“There was a definite improvement on last week,” he said.

“We didn’t give the puck away. But we have been working on it. We had a long video session and we’ll have another one this week.”

Phoenix took the lead in Telford through import forward Juraj Faith but the Tigers drew level with a powerplay goal from Joe Henry on a five on three penalty.

Both goalies stood firm through sudden death overtime but Telford import Marek Hornak scored the winner in a penalty shoot-out.

Phoenix were without James Archer and Ciaran Long for both games but were always in control against Peterborough after Jeff Glowa was given a five plus game for high sticks in the eighth minute.

They led 2-0 at the first break with goals form Martin Cingel and Ladislav Harabin and finished it off in the third with two goals from Faith and a big slapshot from Jaroslav Spelda.

Hand wants to see more goals from all three lines and said: “Juraj has started scoring now which is important but it’s also important for the higher end Brits to start putting some points up.

“It’s not about one or two guys it’s about the whole team.

“It’s not about individuals it’s about how many goals the lines are scoring.

“The team battled well against Telford and we had 50 shots on their net but we came up against a hot goalie.

“We had some good quality chances but over the weekend we conceded just one goal and I’m more than happy with that.

“I just wish we had scored a couple more.

“But to get three points from four with a couple of guys missing I’m quite happy with that.”