SWINDON Wildcats player-coach Aaron Nell felt his side deserved more from their narrow defeat to Milton Keynes Lighting.

The hosts fell behind to an early goal from Adam Carr before Lightning extended their lead in the second period through James Griffin.

However, Swindon rallied and Nell pulled the deficit back to one on the half-hour mark but despite their best efforts to force overtime, Wildcats came up just short.

“It was a good hockey game,” he said.

“I think we were very good tonight and for the first ten minutes they were the better team but for the last 50 minutes, we outplayed them.

“They are a very good team and have an embarrassment of riches and good players and we outworked them tonight and in the end they were really hanging on and we probably deserved a bit more.

“When that first goal goes in, we could have easily put our heads down but we didn’t and we stood firm for five minutes and really took it to them in the last 10 minutes of the second period.

“We were getting some good chances and their goalie was making some big saves.

“They are obviously very good and in the last two period I think we outshot them 25 to 14 and we played them six times last year and didn’t outshoot them once.

“We’re better than we were last year.

“We played very hard tonight. We are a bit short but we all came together and it was a good performance.

“They’re goalie is obviously very good, he is a Polish international and in the end we didn’t quite get what we deserved.”

Despite the 2-1 loss Nell saw plenty to be positive about from the encounter moving forward and is already seeing the signs that his current crop can exceed what the team achieved last term.

“If you play like that 10 times, you will win nine and that was the one we didn’t win,” added Nell.

“We are a clinical team and their goalie is a very good goalie and it was the luck of the draw.

“We didn’t get what we deserved tonight. They played hard and it should have gone to overtime and we deserved at least a point.

“We played extremely hard tonight and showed good character and as a coach it is great to see.”