Nottingham Panthers 6, Basingstoke Bison 2

FOUR goals in the space of four minutes in the final period secured Nottingham Panthers victory in a hard-fought physical contest in the Lace City on Tuesday night.

The contest got off to the worst possible start for the visitors as Kim Alhroos scored after 17 seconds.

However, at 8:09 Christian Widauer made the most of a stray defensive pass to fire into the top corner to tie the game up.

As the period drew to a close, Dave Geris had his lip split by the stick of Mark Cadotte, but there was no call from referee Andy Carson.

The second session saw the Wella Bison shock the home side as they took the lead thanks to Phil Roy at 27:57.

The Panthers drew level four minutes later on the powerplay as Cadotte touched home a Dave Struch blue line shot.

The scores remained level until 49:11 when Lee Jinman put the Panthers in front and suddenly the goals started to flow.

A minute later good work from David Clarke set up Cadotte to score and, with the teams at four-on-four, man-of-the-match Cadotte completed his hat-trick at 52:52.

Just 26 seconds later it became 6-2 as Jinman made the most of a long pass from Briane Thompson to score.

At this point Dean Skinns took over from Curtis Cruickshank in the Bison goal.

However, the action was not over as Panthers' Paul Moran was sent off the bench to fight Michael Wales, who the home side felt had got away with too much throughout the contest. This earned both players 2+2+10 penalties.

Before the start of play Cruickshank returned to the net and an over-eager Daniel Scott, on his first shift, tried to dig the puck out of the Bison goalie.

This sparked a mass brawl involving most of the players on the ice and Cruickshank picked up two minutes for slashing, two for roughing and a 10-minute misconduct penalty, while Scott just got two minutes for charging.

All the penalties were timed at 58:03, which also saw Skinns return to guard the net for the final two minutes. Canadian forward Blake Sorensen was the Bison man-of-the-match.

Scoring, Panthers: Cadotte 3+0, Jinman 2+0, Ahlroos 1+1, Salonen 0+4, Struch, Thompson 0+2, Clarke, Koivunoro 0+1. Bison: Roy, Widauer 1+0, Ciccarello, Moria 0+1. Shots on Goal: Sundberg 21, Cruickshank 47, Skinns 2. Penalties: Panthers 36 min, Bison 42.