Ice hockey star Dani Haid is hoping for full houses this weekend as his Widnes Wild team faces local rivals Deeside Dragons in back-to-back games.
The Cheshire team travel to North Wales on Saturday for the first of two vital fixtures, before returning to their home ground of Planet Ice Widnes on Sunday.
Wild forward Haid said: “Those games are always fun with our fans going there and a lot of theirs are coming to Widnes, so we’re expecting a full barn two days in a row.
“What we can control every game no matter how it goes is the energy and the effort we put in and that’s what we owe every single supporter who takes time and money out of their own life to give towards us.”
Wild have won three of their six games in the regular season so far, and head into Saturday coming off their first home victory, a confident 5-3 over Sheffield Scimitars. They back up these performances with two of two pre-season wins and have had an overall decent start to their season.
Their opponents have played half the number of league games the Wild have since the beginning of the regular season, but have walked away with wins in each of them. Their most recent outing saw them put ten goals past Nottingham Lions at their home rink in Deeside, conceding just one goal across the three periods that game.
Haid said: “We know Deeside is a very offensive team, they like to attack and they like to score a lot of goals so we need to be mindful defensively and then contribute what we can going forward.
“We know they spend a lot more money on players than we do, but I do think we have every chance to go there and upset them.”
The two teams are just a 30-minute drive from each other, separated by the England/Wales border and is the shortest distance for Widnes fans to travel to an away match all season.
Wild enjoyed their last visit to Deeside in November when they came away with their first regular time away win of the season. It was a tight game for both teams, but ultimately the Wild were able to push Deeside back enough to emerge 5-4 over the home team.
It’s almost a year since that upset, and rosters have changed significantly for both teams.
The Wild successfully signed forward Alex Parry from Deeside Dragons before the start of the 2025/26 season, he’s scored two goals with four assists over their six games. Before his move to the Wild, he was alternate captain for the Dragons side, having been with the team since the 2022/23 season.
On the opposition side will be a familiar face in Matt Barlow, who played 24 games for Widnes last season, tallying 18 goals and 16 assists whilst at the team. His success has continued on to his time at Deeside, with four goals and eight assists already in the three games of the Dragons regular season.
Another asset for the Dragons was successfully retaining forward Jake Witkowski who has continued his stellar form into the new season, tallying six goals and six assists over the three games they’ve played. He signed for Deeside last season, and scored an impressive 52 goals over 30 games for the Welsh team.
Picture by Carys Wallace
Netminder Luca Tessadri re-signed for the Widnes Wild at the beginning of the 2025/26 season from Leeds Knights 2, having previously iced for the team in the 2023/24 season.
On the Deeside double-header he said: “We’ve got a good team and we’re coming off a fairly decent month so we’re just taking it game by game.
“Obviously, Deeside is big for us because it’s the rivalry game, hopefully we’ll get off to a good start and see how it goes from there.
“I think it all starts with a good training session. Deeside are a good team so we need to keep the intensity up and practice how we want to play.
“Hopefully we just go from the first whistle and hold them at a steady pace and build into the game really.”
Given the season is still beginning; these games post an opportunity for both teams to place a gap between themselves and their local rivals, as well as gain points on league leaders Blackburn Hawks, as they continue to build on their recent performances in the hopes of reaching playoffs at the end of the regular season.
