Just sometimes it all makes sense. We travel thousands of miles to cold damp rinks in faceless towns scattered across the British Isles to watch and play junior hockey. It costs money, ruins marriages and breaks up families, but just sometimes it all makes sense.

Milton Keynes Storm completed a double over league champions Swindon, condemning the hosts almost certainly to the humiliation of relegation play-offs, and cementing their own position at the top of the league. In a decade of junior hockey, MK had never defeated Swindon on Wiltshire ice, but like so many other hoodoos this season, it has been banished emphatically to the record books.

Swindon had been on the end of a comprehensive 9-0 thrashing in their trip to Planet Ice before Christmas, but this was a very different side from that, both in attitude and personnel. The first few shifts were frantic and charged with tension, and neither side settled enough to control the match. But when MK won a penalty, Jacob Heron (04:35) turned on the burners, skating straight through the entire Cougars line to score a sensational single-handed goal. The hosts came back hard, and clearly this would be no one-sided fixture, but robust defence and outstanding netminding from Chris Gill kept the hosts at bay. The period continued at breakneck pace, with both teams creating chances, but MK hung onto their lead into the first break.