It was a mixed weekend for the Northstars, with a glorious win and the first loss of the 2024 AIHL season. On Saturday night, the Northstars travelled to take on the Canberra Brave, knowing it had been 2564 days since the last win at the Brave Cave, and came home with a 6-2 victory. On Sunday at home the Northstars went to shoot out against the Sydney Ice Dogs and were defeated 5-6.
Assistant Coach Dave Ferrari reflected on Saturday’s win against the Brave: “It’s been a long time since we won (in Canberra). It’s a hard rink to play in, and it felt good to get success there. Canberra has had a rough start to the season, and I think it felt like we put a little more dirt on the grave. They’re far from done, but it felt good to win in that building.”
“We fought hard, and we answered back quickly when they got the game within a goal,” Ferrari continued, “Wagner had a great shot to beat Tetreault, and we built momentum off that. In the third, I thought we did a lot of good things on the small ice as far as the neutral zone and being hard to play against.”
“Our powerplay really worked well and the guys were really clinical with it. While we didn’t score at times, they just really stuck the dagger in the Brave by keeping the puck and having them on their heels which was the most impressive part of the game.”
On Sunday the Northstars played in front of a capacity crowd, and they did not disappoint with this close match going all the way to shoot out.
Head Coach Kevin Noble reflected “I think there are some good learning lessons from this game. We battled back and put ourselves in a position to win a game, but tonight was a lot of individual errors, lost battles and individually got critical points of the game wrong.”
With goals from Daniel Berno, Francis Drolet and Wehebe Darge the Northstars had a 3-2 lead at the end of the first period.
The Sydney Ice Dogs fought back in the second, adding 2 goals and taking the game to the second break leading 3-4.
Noble shared his thoughts on the second period, “It’s about mindset, we started the game well and then the second period was just awful. It wasn’t a smart home period.”
In the third period, Pat Nadin who was celebrating his 200
th AIHL game pushed the Northstars ahead to 5-4 but the Ice Dogs equalised taking us to OT. No goals in OT resulted in a shootout for the game and the Ice Dogs winning with the sole successful goal.
“It’s a pretty cool achievement (to hit 200 games), makes me feel a little bit old now being around that long. It’s definitely cool and a nice feeling to have my family here and celebrate with me.” Nadin shared.
Team mate Francis Drolet shared, “Pat is an all-team guy. Everybody loves him, and he works hard, and shows up every time. Having his family here and seeing him score two big goals for us was great. There’s nothing bad to say about him.”
In regard to next weekend against the Mustangs, Noble shared, “Next weekend is bigger, they’re a good hockey club. We have to tighten up individually and structurally and avoid the lapses that cost us, and we have to be deceptively smarter and have more awareness of game management and situations we will face.”
The Northstars welcome the Melbourne Mustangs to Newcastle on Saturday 4
th May.
They will then take on the Sydney Bears on Sunday 5
th May.
Get your tickets from Northstars.thundertix.com
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