Botany Swarm 2008 NZIHL Champions

Botany Swarm 2008 NZIHL Champions

After 30 games of the 2008 New Zealand Ice Hockey league, the final turnout to be the best game of the season.

The Canterbury Red Devils with the home town advantage faced off against the Botany Swarm in what turnout to be the best game of the season.

Played in front of a capacity house of over 500 people at the Alpine Ice Stadium in Christchurch, the crowd where treated to a fitting end to what has been a fantastic season.
In the regular season the teams had met twice with both games ending with 4 all draws, and from the outset this game was going to be going to be a hard fought close encounter.

The Devils had the advantage for most of the first period but it was the Swarm who scored first after 14 1/2 minutes through Lyle Idoine assisted by the Swarm's Swedish import Adam Carlzon.
Score at the end of the first Period Devils 0 - Swarm 1.

The second period saw the Devils come ou strong scoring after 1 1/2 through Hungarian Import Janos
Kaszala assisted by Paris Heyd and Dale Harrop. The Devils continued their pressure and scored a great short-handed goal by Kaszala assisted by Paris.

Score at the end of the second period Devils 2 - Swarm 1.

The third period saw the Swarm constantly on attack, but were unable to score against the Devils goalie Evan Miller, who managed some amazing saves. The game looked all but over for the Swarm until the final minute of regular time when they pulled their goalie and replaced him with Mitchell Oak, who with just 45 seconds left hammered a shot to the bottom left of the goalie to finish regular time 2 all causing 10 minutes of sudden death overtime.

The gamed seemed to be heading for a penalty shoot out, until one minute left to play when Ian Wannamaker picked up a rebound from the goalie and managed to score the winning goal, assisted by Mitchell Oak and Richard Idoine. The Swarm becoming the 2008 NZIHL Champions.

The NZIHL awards for the season:

Canterbury Red Devils MVP Janos Kaszala
Botany Swarm MVP Zak Nothling
West Auckland Admirals MVP Alex Gävfert
Southern Stampede MVP Brett Speirs
Dunedin Thunder MVP Paavo Huhtinen
NZIHL MVP (Finals) Zak Nothling
NZIHL Higest Points Scorer (Regular Season) Janos Kaszala
NZIHL MVP (Regular Season) Valery Konev
NZIHL Goalkeeper (Regular Season) Zak Nothling
NZIHL Dest Defenseman (Regular Season) Hayden Argyle
NZIHL Rookie Daniel Nichols

This complete the NZIHL season for 2008, as the New Zealand Ice Hockey Federation now begins to starting organise the U18, U20, New Zealand Ice Fernz and the New Zealand Ice Black teams for their respective International Ice Hockey Federation tournaments beginning in December and finishing with the Ice Blacks host the IIHF Division III tournament in Dunedin in April.

ENDS

© Scoop Media