The Kuala Lumpur Cobras culminated a year of hard training and conditioning by winning the first open tournament in their history, defeating the two-time defending champions Hong Kong Tigers 4-1 to take the +35 Open San Miguel Light Cup, the premier title at Bangkok’s City of Angels ice hockey tournament held from March 25-28 at The Rink, 7th floor of the Grand Central Rama IX shopping mall.
KL captain Rich Hutson, commenting on the victory, said, “We had a solid tourney and a really good mix of guys. We actually started talking about wanting to win this thing after last year when we won the Rec division, which was KL’s very first win of any tournament in all the years that we have competed. This year was the first win in an Open division for any KL team.
Players from Hong Kong Tigers and Kuala Lumpur Cobras battle for honours in the tournament final at the Central Rama IX ice rink, March 28. (Photo/Tadamasa Nagayama)
“We had an extremely fit team and this allowed us to roll three lines. We have a good team of guys who can only play one tourney a year because they are teachers and can never get time off, so City of Angels is the one.
“We had a new goalie that moved here last year who played well for us. Most important, we had Sheldon Flaman and his brother Dallas, both Saskatchewan boys. Sheldon played with us last year and this year he brought his brother out for a holiday and he played with us too.”
The two leading scorers in the tournament both happened to be Cobras; Jeff Hritzuk with nine goals and four assists and Dallas Flaman with six goals and seven assists.
KL’s goalie oversees the play. (Photo/Tadamasa Nagayama)
The City of Angels tourney started in 2008 with two teams from Bangkok, Singapore’s Rusty Blades and a squad from Beijing. This year 20 squads from around the world competed in three different divisions: six in the +35 Open; six in the +35 Rec, and eight in the +40 Rec division.
Bangkok’s Flying Farangs entered two teams in the tourney, “A” and “B”, the former led by Geoff McIntyre and the latter by Stephen Sproule. The “A” team lost in a shootout to Kuala Lumpur in the semi-final after battling back to take the game into overtime on a goal by McIntyre, who was the leading Farang point-getter in the tourney with two goals and six assists.
The B team made it to the +35 Rec Movenpick Hotel and Resorts Cup, losing to Pandoo Nation by a score of 4-2. The line of Sproule, Devin Keer and Marcel Bouwens was particularly effective for the B squad.
Flying Farang Vladimír Procházka in action against Pandoo Nation. (Photo/Tadamasa Nagayama)
The +40 Rec Tier I, the LightHouse A Go Go Cup, saw two teams from Beijing square off, split their teams and tie. While, the +40 Rec Tier II title, the JOG Sports Cup, was won by the New Delhi Scared Bulls who defeated the Shanghai Red Guard 2-1.
The scorekeeping and time-clock was handled by Chuck Chaiyakul and Alex Manton and they both did a great job of recording the stats and making sure the games ran smoothly.
San Miguel Light against the Tokyo Canadians. (Photo/Tadamasa Nagayama)
Head referee Richard Alanthwaite and his team of referees did great work as the games were incident free for the most part and the zebras did a good job keeping the rough stuff under control.
The organizer of the tourney as always was Scott Whitcomb and with help from his dad Brad and his lovely wife Jeab, the Whitcomb family did a super job once again of staging the City of Angels tournament.
