Another report by Mike "Bobblehat" Blackmun
No proper report as even I cannot be objective(!) about a game that was refereed by someone who seemed to be in cloud cuckoo land for much of the time.
Some examples:
Rob Stewart and a Steeler collided in the first minute and an interference penalty was called on Rob; Tony Hand bundled Mark Bernard into the net, and Jason Coles who was coming in behind Hand was given a 2 minute interference penalty; Frank Kovacs caught Jason Coles with a high stick behind the Bees net which the ref apparently didn't see and so let it go, but when Jason clobbered Kovacs a few seconds later the ref gave Kovacs a 2 minute for roughing and a further 2 minutes for high sticks, which could only have been from the original incident!! Had he called this properly at the time Jason would not have needed to retaliate; Rob Stewart called for holding Chinn's stick when it was apparent to 2000 people but not the ref that the only person holding Chinn's stick was himself; and what is an ""illegal substitution"? to call a bench minor when Jim sent Bernie back on after pulling him for a few seconds defies belief unless there is something in the rule book that I don't know about (ie is putting your netminder back on "on the fly" in exchange for an out-ice player an illegal act?) - how Jim kept his temper I don't know!!!
Normally poor refereeing evens itself out, but in this game the result had as much to do with the officials as with the teams as the Steelers scored twice on powerplays as the direct result of a bad refereeing decision. One goal coming after a tripping call on Jeff Johnstone, when a Steeler fell over trying to get the puck away, and the other after the "illegal substitution" call.
In case it was thought that all the bad calls were against the Bees, I did notice at the time that some of the calls on Steelers players were also dubious, and in the interests of fairness I should have made a record of these, but as I am not noted for my impartiality somehow these did not get recorded in any detail!!
Apart from that, in the end Sheffield just about deserved their win if only for the fact that the Bees didn't take their chances with Brian Pellerin the biggest culprit, as he twice fell over when shaping up to put the puck in an unguarded net!! Wayde Bucsis also missed a couple of golden chances and Dean Richards should have scored when he was set up in front of goal by Peter Romeo. I suppose these were evened out a bit when Bernie foiled Ken Priestly on a 1 to 1. Finally it looked as though Dale Junkin sustained an injury towards the end of the game - hope its not serious.
For those who are interested, Sheffield took the lead on 3:28, through Lafreniere, after good play by Kovacs and Mulvenna. As Mike says, the other two goals came on the powerplay, Priestley's on 30:36 after setup play by Hand and Wilson, and Hand himself on 49:45, set up by Leach. I'm pretty certain that Leach's took a fairly wicked deflection over Berny's shoulder, although nobody else noticed it, so maybe I was wrong. Bracknell repsonded with just 1:44 left on the clock, when Peter Romeo flicked the puck over an inert Hibbert, after having been set up by Matty and Buch. Finally, congrats to the Steelers travelling support, for being so loud - Alex.