Coach questions standards after costly Telford Tigers cup defeat
Telford Tigers head coach Tom Watkins believes his side need a 'wake-up call' as he criticised the team's standards in their cup defeat to Hull Seahawks.
A poor performance saw Telford lose comfortably at home, suffering a costly 5-1 defeat.
Watkins, frustrated at the display, has questioned his team and demanded a reaction both on and off the ice.
He said: “That was not our best performance at all and it ends our hopes of qualifying for the final four of the cup.
"We need our best players to be our best players and I don’t think we got anywhere close to that. It seems our players need a wake up call every night.
"The dressing room has to hold each other accountable, expect more from one another to raise the standards across the board.
"I thought when Ben (Norton) came into the nets he battled for pucks and looked comfortable, I thought Nick (Oliver) made a solid return and showed a lot of composure on the puck and Bryn (Capps) was skating hard, playing a good two way game.
"Outside of that I would question either the compete level or the quality of execution of the performance of most of the group to get anything going.”
Tigers had recently been suffering from slow starts to matches and often their first period performance had cost them the game. A penalty called on Tom Byrne for tripping in the 10th minute would see Hull open the scoring.
On the subsequent power play, Jordan Stallard set up Bobby Chamberlain to score.
Five minutes later, the visitors doubled the lead. The Tigers' defence were caught out when Johnny Corneil broke away to score.
Telford had been off the pace during the first period and this continued in the second period as Hull effectively killed the game off with a three goal burst.
Stallard scored after more defensive hesitation led to a turnover on the Tigers’ blue line and then a low shot from Tommy Spraggon who was stood alongside the boards by the Hull bench beat Brad Day for Hull’s fourth.
When Lee Bonner scored from close range for Hull’s fifth goal, Day skated off to be replaced in goal by Ben Norton.
The game was over as a contest but Tigers broke Jordan McLaughlin’s shutout bid with a power play goal from Patrick Brown late in the game.
A poor performance from the home side saw them fall out of contention for the cup semi final places and drop to fifth in the league standings.
