Match Radboud Saints
Friday 13 January 2012 09:35 by Jeroen Hutten

The first match of 2012 for the first team took place on Sunday the 8th  of January against the Radboud Saints from Nijmegen. The previous match against the Saints was won with a glorious 14-2 but this one could become a bit more difficult due to the absence of the Scandinavian and Russian delegations.

Although not of full combat strength everybody was quite psyched to kick some Nijmegen ass. Jurjen vd Hengel had brought music to get everybody pumped and whilst listening to Black & Yellow and Knock Knock everybody suited up.

During warming up we noticed three new players, which could mean trouble. After a motivational talk by captain Niels de Boer telling everybody to start off really hard, the match begun. 
Due to Niels speech everybody went all in, directly from the start. Every single time our opponent was on the puck they were directly put under pressure due to the hard working offensive players. Our defensive players also really stood their ground because The Saints barely got through.

With 4.01 minutes on the clock Bjorn scored the first of his total 4 goals assisted by Jurjen. With this first goal we really got the taste of blood and Nijmegen was nowhere to be found. Tim got a penalty at 14:41 for holding on to the stick he had just broken on chest of one of Nijmegen’s players but although playing shorthanded for 2 mins, we stayed in control. Together with Bjorn also Bauer and Jurjen scored in the first period bringing the score at the end of the first period to 6-0.

We started the second period the way we ended the first one, by putting Nijmegen under a lot of pressure and taking advantage of every mistake they made. This paid of pretty fast when Jurjen scored the first goal of the second period at 21:21 assisted by Anna. The next one to score was Jeroen by tipping in a careful placed shot by Tim. Being mad for his broken stick, Tim got even with Nijmegen by scoring the next goal. After which Lex, Jurjen and Thomas also managed to around the hot headed goalie of Nijmegen. Due to the hard working defensive players and an excellent job by goalie Martijn the score at the end of the second period was 11-0.

While the ice was being cleaned, captain Niels gave another motivational speech which can be summarized by: “I want more goals and less sloppy play”. Taking into account this advice we went on the ice again to seal the deal.

Within one minute Jurjen scored the 12th goal quickly followed by Tim who scored at 41:15. Getting a bit too much excited keeping Nijmegen out of our zone, Johan got a penalty for slashing followed by Niek who tripped an unfortunate Saints winger. During the shorthanded play Nijmegen got nowhere near our goal and the very few shots that got through were beautifully blocked by goalie Martijn. A couple of minutes after the shorthanded play, Powerfrau Faber made the 14th goal of the match. In the last 10 minutes Jurjen, Tim and Jeroen were able to score another 4 goals brining the final score to 18-0.

Everybody did an excellent job but especially goalie Martijn and our hard working defensive players effort are worth mentioning. Due to their hard work we were able to end this match with zero goals against which didn’t happen before in season 2011-2012. Last but not least I would like to suggest that the goalie from Nijmegen attends an anger management and a sportsmanship course. He had a tough match that’s for sure, but running away angry before the usual handshake is just plain pathetic.