Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Stars get set home fans at
WITH the club having missed out on a play-off place, Dundee Stars go into their two final matches of the 2017/18 Elite Ice Hockey League season this weekend.
Tomorrow sees the final home game when Nottingham Panthers are the visitors to Dundee Ice Arena (F/O 7pm). On Sunday they travel to Belfast to play Giants in their final game of the season.
While in most cases it would be deemed a bad season by not qualifying for the post-season tournament, the club will look upon it as a turning point in their short Elite League history.
Stars were faced with a severe blow when, with just a few weeks till the season started and with just a handful of players signed, coach Marc LeFebvre walked out to take up a position with a club in North America.
Stars moved quickly to appoint former Manchester Storm coach Omar Pacha as head coach and general manager. He proceeded to bring in his own players and quickly put together a team to start the season.
It wasn’t the most glorious start to the campaign as injuries hit the squad very quickly, including the highlyexperienced Chris Lawrence, who missed the first half of the season.
More injuries followed and, during that time, the Taysiders failed to ice a full roster. The turn of the year saw a huge upturn in the club’s fortunes. They brought in some new players and, with injuries starting to clear up, they made an excellent start to January, winning nine out of their 10 matches.
Suddenly the play-offs became a possibility when just weeks before it was a wild dream.
This saw average attendances of 900 in September increase to over 1,500 towards the closing stages of the season.
Although their play-off push fell just short, Stars’ profile was greatly increased and with the club announcing Pacha has signed a contract that will see him in Tayside for the next three years, the future looks bright for professional hockey in Dundee.
Pacha said: “It’s been a disappointment not qualifying for the play-offs but the players and everyone at the club gave it their all.
“We didn’t have the best of starts to the season and were then hit by an unbelievable run of injuries would that have tested any team.
“The players battled through it and, from the beginning of this year, they