In a game where little went right for Sparta, Phillip was his usual dependable and disciplined self, and he did so with an injured hand.

"I fell on my hand and stretched some ligaments, but I managed to play with it somehow," he said. If his hand caused him any pain, the way the game progressed didn´t help his mood any. The team conceded a powerplay goal in the second minute and missed not one but two penalty shots in the opening 20. "Of course, if we´d scored the game could have come out differently, but we just didn´t," lamented the tall rearguard.

Before the game, Sparta´s game plan involved guarding sniper Martin Růžička without taking unnecessary penalties. "Třinec has some dangerous forwards and we had to be careful not to take penalties, but unfortunately we did. It stemmed from the fact that we weren´t skating. If we had skated better, we wouldn´t have taken those penalties. The Třinec players were livelier and forced us to take penalties to stop them. That was the biggest problem," he concluded.

They weren´t able to stop Růžička, either. The Extraliga´s leading scorer during the regular season scored on a four-on-three powerplay in the 31st minute to make it 3-0. Surely, coach Josef Jandač was not pleased with his team´s lack of discipline.

"He was not happy, he confronted us about it, but it didn´t help. Tonight it just didn´t work out for us. We have to learn from this game and come out with a completely different performance on Saturday."

On Saturday, Sparta will try to bounce back and even the series, but how?

"The lesson? We have to stay out of the box. We knew that already before the series because they have an excellent powerplay and it showed tonight. Concerning our scoring, it´s easy. We have to make life more miserable for their goalie and create a lot of traffic in front. We need players going into those areas and screening him and make their defence work," said an experienced defenceman himself.