North Stars hold on to glimmer of hope

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In a season filled with ups and downs, and a rollercoaster of emotion, beginning with the Newcastle side struggling to find their feet in their home rink, and drawing to a close within stretching distance of the finals, the North Stars now stand only four points out of the top four.
 
With one eye fixed on the playoffs that are rapidly approaching at the end of the month, the North Stars now only have two more weekends of hockey to play before they can lift themselves from the dust and see if the team’s perfect finals record remains intact.
 
The chance to take back a place in the top four with a surprise run of form in the last few weeks of the tournament are still on the cards for the North Stars and coach Garry Doré, who has high hopes that his team can do what it takes to challenge for a position.
 
“The boys are motivated and they vowed to play hard and start our wins tonight,” Doré said after the win over the Ice Dogs at the Hunter Ice Skating Stadium a few weeks ago.
 
The team has taken the closing rounds of the 2014 league game by game, as an important double-header away in Sydney left the North Stars collecting six more points from two stellar performances, helped along by star imports Chris Wilson and Cody Danberg, both of whom have entered into the top eight scoring leaders in the league, with both friends sitting on forty-five total points.
 
The games in the Hunter Ice Skating Stadium the following weekend resulted in the North Stars defeating the Sydney Bears 6-2, one day after a spectacular 5-4 finish against Perth Thunder that saw Chris Wilson snatch a goal to take the North Stars to a win in regulation time, seven seconds before the clock slammed onto zero.
 
The goal was a result of an all-out attack strategy from Doré, pulling Harrison May with the scores tied in a bid to take that last point and stay in the finals contention – a gamble that paid off.
 
The North Stars coach believes that a big part of the winning streak comes down to the return of Beau Taylor from British Columbia Intercollegiate Hockey League. Taylor played for the Selkirk Saints, and contributed to the team’s 20 wins in 24 games in the regular season, before taking out the league championship. Taylor contributed a hat-trick in the first game of the playoffs and finished the season with an average of a point per game.
 
All eyes now turn to the next game in the line between the boys in red and blue, and the playoffs in Melbourne.
 
Doré has hope for his side and is refusing to give up on the squad, even through the less than stellar start to the season.
 
“Mathematically we’re still in the game,” Doré told the Newcastle Herald. “Realistically though a lot of people have written us off.  But we’re the North Stars, we know what it takes to win and we just need to keep on winning.”
 
And the fans know it too. Out in droves for the Hunter Ice Skating Stadium games, the North Star fans have cheered themselves hoarse supporting the team as they continue to cut a path across the ice for a chance to take home the Goodall after a six-year wait for the return of the hallowed trophy.
 
Now the last weeks of the league set in, and with it the nail-biting finale to a season that has had a twist in every weekend, a change in the table every round, and every ice hockey fan across the country will be eager to see the results of the battle that the last games will bring.
 
Doré believes that his squad is ready for the challenge, and believes that every game has to be taken as if it is the most important of the whole season now – and in some ways they are.
 
“We’re trying to play like you have to if you make the finals, as every game is like a grand final to us,” he said to the Newcastle Star late last week.
 
The North Stars face off against the first placed Mustangs on Saturday at the Medibank Icehouse, before taking on the third placed Melbourne Ice the next day in their double-header south of the border, and if Doré and the Novocastrians fail to walk away with six points across the weekend then their rising star will be eliminated and the season will effectively be over for the boys in red and blue.