Dragons Tier 1 Cup Champions!

You may have noticed that we’ve been on a bit of a hiatus. That’s because we were gearing up for the BUIHA Season Championship on Friday April 24th in Sheffield and took a well-deserved break at the end of the season. The championship game is the culmination of the 2025 – 2026 season with the absolute best team of the North playing the undisputed best team of the South. This is the season’s most important and impressive game with the highest and most competitive level of hockey played in the BUIHA.

You may have also noticed from the title of this article, that while we were up in Sheffield, the London Dragons became the 2025 – 2026 League Champions!

The London Dragons beat the Nottingham Mavericks 9-3 in the Cup Competition Playoffs at Ice Sheffield. We took control early in the first period with our Computer Science and AI Specialist from University of Hertfordshire, Aleksandr Zaborskikh opening the scoring at 3:01, finishing off a pass from Nikita Piazenko to make it 1-0 (don't forget to check out Nikita's Player Spotlight).

After Nottingham took a cross-checking penalty midway through the period, Assistant Captain and President, Michael D'Aprix doubled the lead on the power play at 10:02, assisted by rookie D-man and law student at Queen Mary University of London Seamus Nangle and alum D-man Tom Jungbluth (don't forget to read Seamus' Player Spotlight). We also picked up a pair of minor penalties later in the period, with Jungbluth called for cross-checking and Zaborskikh for interference, but we carried a 2-0 lead into the break.

The second period broke the game wide open. Nottingham gave up another power play at 22:43, and the Dragons took advantage less than two minutes later when Piazenko scored to make it 3-0, assisted by rookie and engineering student at Northeastern University London Maxwell Tong and Zaborskikh at 24:24 (don't forget to read about Tonger).

Just 21 seconds later, Nottingham were invited to a classic Arty Party with a goal from none other than our Captain and graduate of The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Artem V. Meshcherin, assisted by Zaborskikh and another veteran D-man lawyer from King's College London Edward Xing to make it 4-0. Nottingham tried to fight back on the power play at 25:32 with a goal from Wyatt Scott after Patrick Chapman had been sent off for tripping, cutting the lead to 4-1.

We restored full control late in the period when Meshcherin scored his second of the night at 39:47, assisted by Chapman and Zaborskikh, giving the Dragons a 5-1 lead heading into the third.

We kept pushing in the final period. Programmer and student at University of Hertfordshire Joshua Hudak took us to 6-1 at 43:10, and Tong added the seventh at 48:55, assisted from our in-house veterinarian at the Royal Veterinary College Gabriel Duarte and King's College London mathematician Tristan Monden. Our oldest, most veteran player, published political writer, and lecturer at University of Exeter, Raphaël Girard scored at 53:23 assisted by Zaborskikh and Tong, before Hudak grabbed his second of the game at 54:16 from Girard and recent The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) graduate Patrick Chapman to make it 9-1.

Nottingham found a couple of late goals through Marius Blazart at 56:59 and Wyatt Scott at 58:00, but the game was over by then.

Our youngest player and rookie Maxwell Tong was named MVP of the game while our Captain, Arty, scored that sweet game winning goal. 

Record Breaking Season

Zaborskikh achieved Dragons immortality by breaking almost every single-season stat for our team and is now the record holder for Franchise Points Per Season with 50 points, second as Goals Per Season with 23 (just one away from first), and first in Assists Per Season with 27.

Another record breaker was our Assistant Captain Michael D’Aprix, who played his 9th and final season in the BUIHA, and who reached 115 All-time Points, tied for 3rd place in the BUIHA for Tier 1 All-Time Points Leaders. D’Aprix is also first for the Dragons in All-time Points, Assists with 68 and second in All-Time Goals with 47, just behind yet another record breaker this year! 

Our Assistant Captain Raphael Girard claimed number one for All-time Goals with 54 and is second in All-time points with 108 and Assists with 54!  With the numbers new players are putting up, these records won’t be lasting for long!

We’d also like to thank our Alumni, Kalle Uusitalo, Nick Florus, Kyle Rarick, Lukas Frlicka and Team Photographer Nicole Stone who traveled up to Sheffield to support us! And last but not least, we'd like to thank all of the families, friends, and parents of players who made the trek all the way to Sheffield to support us!

IAS and Nationals Tournament

The weekend wasn’t over for the Dragons after winning the BUIHA Championship on Friday night. The next day saw the BUIHA International All-Stars Game in which our best international players played against the GB Universities team.  The Dragons had at least one player on every goal scored by the International All-Stars. More on that next week though!

You might think two of the most intense games in a weekend is enough, but we had more hockey which we’ll just briefly add in here at the end. The Dragons also participated in the BUIHA’s end-of-season National’s Tournament. This is a collection of all of the Tier 1 teams playing short, running clock games across Saturday and Sunday in the last weekend of April. 

It’s a curious competition to join after winning the most important title of the year. We managed to get to the final round of the tournament after 5 wins in a row and took home the second place title when the tournament ended in the wee hours of Monday morning. The team was battered and bruised but happy to have achieved our goal of winning the League Championship. 

In true Dragon’s fashion, everyone headed back to class or work on Monday.  Every year the Championship Game and the National’s Tournament are in the middle of our students’ exam period which is always a difficult ask of our players as education always comes first. 

It is a true testament to the Dragon’s legacy to have had a full roster of committed athletes who played 360 mins of hockey over a weekend, finished the tournament at 2:00am, changed in a storage room, and still got back to complete their final exams or back to work!  We’d like to thank all of our student athletes for their hard work, sacrifice and commitment this year. 

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At the bottom of every article we'll also include links to all of our web pages and our forms. As always, please help us in our journey to reinvigorate the Dragons after UoL cut all sports!

• If you were on the Dragons, please help us keep in touch with our Alumni Contact Update form!