Bristol Pitbulls open league season with a win over Slough Harrier Hawks
Cardiff Dragons 2 Bristol Pitbulls 2
Bristol Pitbulls opened their season with three points out of four last weekend.
On Saturday the Pitbulls took on Slough Harrier Hawks at the Bristol Ice Rink, without the services of Steve Osman and Luke Merrick, and ran out 13-2 winners.
They wasted little time in showing Slough that they were still a force to be reckoned with, as player-coach Rich Hargreaves scored within the first minute.
From there on in it was pretty much all Pitbulls, with goals from Australian import Adrian Espostio, Mike Smith (two) and Mike Hargreaves (two) seeing the home team take a 6-0 lead going into the first break.
Much the same followed for the second period and third period, with Bristol Pitbulls running out easy 13-2 winners
Twenty-four hours later and the Pitbulls were in action away to Cardiff Dragons.
The home side fired in an early goal midway through the first only for Espostio to equalise just before the end of the period.
The second period saw a string of penalties, but neither team managed to capitalise on them.
Cardiff grabbed the lead early in the third period with a fortuitous strike – rebounding into the goal after hitting goaltender Jon Dibble.
With less than three minutes remaining player-coach Hargreaves' shot from the top of the circle beat Cardiff's goaltender to tie the game at 2-2.
Hargreaves said: "I'm really happy with the outcome of this weekend. We had guys missing both games but we still managed to find a way to win.
"The guys worked really hard and the score line shows that, we scored 13 goals on Saturday against middle-of-the-table team and we stole a point on the road against a tough Cardiff team.
"Those points are in the bag now and have put us third in the league after only the first weekend."
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