After a turbulent week which saw the departure of Danny Marshall and Scott Nichol, Chieftains travelled to the Isle of Wight to play table toppers Wightlink Raiders on the smallest rink in the league and they chose the occasion to put together a powerful performance which posted their league title aspirations.

A furious start saw Raiders ahead at 3.01 when a Johan Jonsson blue liner sailed past Dave Pinchin in the Chieftains' net.

Chieftains pulled level at 6.04, following fine work by Pete Cooper which ended in Tero Sarkinieni hitting an unstoppable slapshot from the blue line, his first goal for the club.

Raiders' Tobias Holmqvhist replied with a breakaway raid, but Chieftains bounced back and Cooper's pass fell to Glen Moorhouse who saw a blue liner bounce off the goalie only for Sarkinieni to snap in the rebound.

Chieftains went ahead after a goalmouth scramble ended with the puck in the net, the goal being credited to Cooper and assisted by Sarkinieni.

Chieftains led 3-1 but a bad facial injury to Craig Metcalf looked to disrupt things.

Chieftains came out for the second period with reshuffled lines, but they rained in 22 shots on Craig Wynn in the home net.

The save of the period came from Pinchin who, having been in action one side of his net, flung himself full length for a diving save to the other which kept the score at 3-2 to Chieftains.

The visitors controlled the last period with Metcalf back on the ice.

With Jonathan Main in the penalty box for a tripping offence, Chieftains scored after Cooper's set up saw Sarkinieni complete his hat-trick.

Finding themselves short-handed, three to five, Raiders scored at 48.19, and with just two seconds remaining on the same power-play, the puck was prodded home by Metcalf to record his first goal for the club.

Chieftains as good as wrapped the game up in the space of 22 seconds.

At 51.32, Anders Tjarnstrom laid the foundation for Rogers to work the puck back out to Tjarnstrom, who powered a blue liner past Wynn and Sarkinieni made it a personal four goal tally with a fierce slapshot.

Raiders then made the brave decision to withdraw their goalie, opting for the extra skater, but with an empty net beckoning, Tjarnstrom intercepted a pass and coolly guided the puck in.

With 18 seconds left, Pinchin's clearance found its way through the perimeter netting and was construed as a delay of game penalty for which (being in the final two minutes of the game) a penalty shot was awarded to Raiders, a shot which coach Peter Nymen duly converted.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.