By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor - Shleby County Reporter
After a long battle to make the top eight, the Birmingham Bulls are officially in the SPHL Presidents Cup Playoffs thanks to an undefeated three-game stretch of road games against the bottom two teams in the league. The Bulls defeated the Macon Mayhem 2-1 on overtime on Thursday morning, March 20 ahead of a pair of wins at the Pensacola Ice Flyers, first a 2-1 overtime win on Friday, March 21 and then a 4-2 victory on Saturday, March 22.
With the wins, Birmingham moved into fifth place in the SPHL standings and just one point behind the Fayetteville Marksmen for fourth place and home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs. The Bulls are also five points ahead of the sixth-place Knoxville Ice Bears with a game in hand.
Playoff matchups will be announced at the conclusion of the regular season on Saturday, April 5.
Riding the high of three wins in their previous four games, Birmingham headed east to Macon for a rare weekday morning game against the Mayhem on March 20 at the Macon Centreplex and wasted little time getting ahead.
After a Mayhem hooking call just 1:20 into the game, Arkhip Ledziankou scored 1:19 into the power play off assists from his brother Filimon Ledziankou as well as Ryan Romeo to take a 1-0 lead.
The Bulls led the shots on goal tally for the second and third periods as they took advantage of five additional power plays before the end of the game. However, Birmingham couldn’t capitalize with a goal on any of the final four man-advantages, and that left the door open for Macon. With 4:54 remaining in regulation, the Mayhem’s Conor Witherspoon scored the equalizer. The hosts then kept the game tied for the final minutes to send it into overtime. The Bulls went straight to work in the extra period as Filimon Ledziankou and MacGregor Sinclair found Kolten Olynek just 31 seconds into overtime for the game-winning goal.
Birmingham found itself in another tight battle against Pensacola the next night at the Pensacola Bay Center. The game started off with fireworks as the Bulls’ Jamie Dorsey and the Ice Flyers’ Jake Hamilton dropped the gloves and fought right after the opening face-off. While both players went to the box to serve five-minute penalties after that, it proved to be the most action of the first period as Birmingham’s 16 shots in the first 20 minutes went wanting.
Pensacola then quickly scored in the second period as Troy Button and Tyler German found Lukas Jirousek just 1:20 after the first intermission for the 1-0 lead. The Bulls then had to kill off their first penalty of the game a couple of minutes later, but they got a chance at revenge with 6:54 remaining in the second period off Tim Faulkner’s second penalty of the game.
Troy MacTavish scored 1:10 into the power play off assists from Arkhip Ledziankou and Taylor Brierley to tie the game up at 1-1 ahead of the second intermission. Birmingham struck once again early in the third period as Carson Rose found Arkhip Ledziankou for the go-ahead goal, giving the visitors a 2-1 advantage with 14:06 remaining. The Ice Flyers started turning the tide in the third period as they outshot the Bulls 11-6 in the final 20 minutes. After going to the well frequently down the stretch, Pensacola came away with an equalizer thanks to Ivan Bondarenko’s goal with just 1:02 remaining.
That left the Bulls facing their second overtime game in as many days, and they repeated their success from Thursday. Rose and Arkhip Lediziankou linked up once again with 3:10 remaining in overtime to produce the game-winning goal and clinch a spot in the postseason for Birmingham. Hayden Stewart finished the game with 25 saves off 27 shots faced.
The Bulls finished the road trip with a strong start to the game on Saturday against the Ice Flyers. Olynek scored just 2:12 into the game thanks to help from Nikita Kozyrev and Andrew Bellant for the 1-0 lead, and later on in the period, Filimon Ledziankou scored off assists from Arkhip and Rose to double up the lead with 3:51 remaining in the first.
While neither team committed a penalty in the first period, they combined for 11 in the final two periods, including three different power play chances for the Bulls in the second. Birmingham didn’t capitalize on any of those in the second period, but it did manage to get a slight shots-on-goal advantage in a game with much less action on the net than usual. Bellant then turned the momentum into a goal off assists from Kozyrev and Olynek for the 3-0 lead with 1:56 remaining in the second. However, two Bulls penalties greatly shifted the tides in the third period.
After a Kozyrev tripping call with 17:05 remaining, Lukas Jirousek got the Ice Flyers on the board. A Trevor Thurston holding call just one minute later led to another Jirousek power play goal as he cut the deficit to 3-2 with 13:57 left in the game. That turned up the pressure on the Bulls to put the game away, but more Pensacola mischief made that much easier.
Birmingham got a 5-on-3 power play with 11 minutes remaining after the Ice Flyers committed two penalties in a 30-second span. While that didn’t lead to a goal, the Bulls got a lengthy chance with a man-advantage after Wiesner threw an elbow with 5:47 remaining. He was assessed a game misconduct penalty in addition to the five-minute major, ejecting him and subjecting him to a minimum of a one-game suspension.
With a five-minute power play and just a little more time on the clock than that to work with, Olynek scored an unassisted goal just 56 seconds into the power play to seal the 4-2 win. Stewart stopped 21 of the 23 shots he faced to earn the win. Olynek’s two-goal, one-assist night gave him the First Star while Kozyrev’s two assists landed him the Third Star.
The Bulls will hit the road to face the Huntsville Havoc on Thursday, March 27 at 7 p.m. at Propst Arena at the Von Braun Center ahead of their final homestand of the season. Birmingham will return home on Friday, March 28 and Saturday, March 29 to face the Fayetteville Marksmen. Each game will start at 7:05 p.m. at the Pelham Civic Complex and Ice Arena.