Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Stars slay the a gritty home
DUNDEE Stars bounced back from a stinging defeat to Fife on Saturday with a gritty 2-0 win against visitors Belfast Giants at Dundee Ice Arena last night.
With forward Adam Harding and defencemen Chris Lawrence, Joey De Concilys, Cameron McGiffin and Anthony Mastrodicasa sitting out with injuries, the home side started the game with just 14 skaters against a powerful Giants side.
This gave some of the home-grown players a chance to step up to the plate and saw winger Jordan Cownie and young D-man Kris Inglis given plenty of ice time — the latter putting in a sterling display in front of netminder Travis Fullerton.
Both keepers were in brilliant form in the first period, saving everything that came their way to leave the ice at the interval with no scoring.
After the restart, the game burst into life four minutes in when Giants’ Chris Truehl was finally beaten.
Swede Johan Anderson found the net after an assist by Riley Stadel.
The first penalty of the game saw Jonathan Ferland sit out a two-minute minor for hooking on 34 minutes but Stars failed to capitalise on the powerplay.
As the middle stanza drew to a close, Stars coach Omar Pacha was sent to the sin bin for two-minutes for hooking with eight seconds left on the clock.
Belfast came out hard in the final period and almost made the extra man count but Fullerton again denied them as they played out the penalty kill.
In the 46th minute, Stars broke out of their defensive zone when a quick one-two with Gabriel Levesque and Stadel set up Brian Hart.
The American let rip with an unstoppable shot to give the Taysiders a two-goal lead.
Belfast were beginning to get rattled and ill discipline saw Brendan Connolly take a 10-minute penalty for misconduct on the 49th minute.
With less than two minutes to go, Giants pulled their goalie as they searched for a way past Fullerton but the Canadian stopper wasn’t to be denied his shutout and Man-of-theMatch award as the buzzer signalled a huge home win for Stars.
Coach Pacha was proud of his players’ display.
He said:“It was a great team effort.