THE Bespoke Guardians Swindon Wildcats will welcome back four key players this weekend as they seek to gain revenge on Milton Keynes Lightning in the National Ice Hockey League.

Tomasz Malasinski, Sam Bullas, Declan Balmer, and Balint Pakozdi all missed last Saturday’s 4-3 win at home to the Raiders but will return to the roster on Friday night against Basingstoke Bison before going again against the Lightning on Saturday.

The last time the pair of title rivals met, MK emerged victorious but in a manner that irked the Swindon camp so much, Nell called the Lightning’s actions ‘embarrassing’ during the post-match interview.

The sore point for both teams had surrounded the perceived ‘spirit of the game’ that was allegedly absent when the beaten team in both previous games was suffering with Covid issues.

However, with Swindon and MK at full strength this time, Nell says there can be no excuses and it will be a case of: ‘may the best team win.’

He said: “The four players that were missing last weekend are all back, so this will be as strong a line-up as we’re going to have.

“It’s going to be a very hard game. Milton Keynes have got an excellent team, and they’ve strengthened twice in the last couple of weeks.

“This will be the first time since October that we’ve played each other with both of us having a full line-up. The atmosphere in MK is always excellent, and I’m sure it will be as good as ever on Saturday.

“On paper, they have got the best team in the league. They’ve got excellent players which they’ve also added to twice in the last two weeks.

“They had a bad weekend last weekend, so they’re going to be raring to go.

“I expect them to come out hard, so we’ve got to weather the storm early and be strong defensively to get a win.”