Warriors will be looking to get back to winning ways this weekend when David Longstaff and his side head to Sheffield to take on the Senators on Saturday afternoon. Whitley and Senators have never met before as the side based at Ice Sheffiled have operated in NIHL North Division 2 in recent years until their promotion into Division 1 of the NIHL North set up at the end of the 2014/15 campaign.
Senators are yet to pick up a point this season however they had an encouraging performance against the Solihull Barons recently when Sens were equal to the Barons for almost 2 periods of the match. Sheffield have a good powerplay unit to call upon as all 3 of their goals in that match up with Solihull came when they had the man advantage through Nathan Parkes Britton and Arran Bell on 2 occassions.
Warriors head into Saturday’s game boosted by the news that import Andre Payette is available to ice now that he is free from the suspension that kept him out of one of Whitley’s games last weekend. Andre has been in fine form for Warriors this season playing as an uncompromising d man who can set up fine offensive plays from his berth on the blue line. The veteran Canadian has also shown himself to be skilled at winning vital face offs during the first couple of months of his time with Warriors.
Warriors do have a number of players set to miss the Senators clash through injury though as long term absentees Alex Lawson and Craig Johnson are still ruled out of action while the likes of Dean Holland, Dan Pye and Ben Richards who all iced last weekend are unfortunately not fit enough to ice against the Senators. Stu Tomlinson and Alan Yarrow will also be missing from the Warriors line up this weekend.
Whitley’s coaching staff do still have a strong roster of players to chose from and youngsters such as Kyle Ross could well get significant ice time this weekend. Kyle who first broke into the Warriors squad around 2 years ago gives everything he has for Warriors everytime he is out on the ice and despite his small stature he will battle away against any opponent he comes up against.
Warriors clash with Senators gets underway at 3.45pm on Saturday (31st October). Next weekend sees Whitley back in action on home ice when Sheffield’s other side in the division the Spartans will head to Tyneside on Sunday (8th November) for a league game that gets underway at the clubs usual 5pm face off time. Tickets for the home game are priced at £8.50 for adults and £6.50 for juniors while a family tickets can be bought for £24. It would be great to see another healthy crowd at Hillheads for what will no doubt be a highly entertaining game of hockey between 2 highly skilled sides.