Perth Thunder’s season opening weekend was against a game hardened & full strength Melbourne Ice … and unfortunately we were beaten 3-0 in both games.
The loss of import key defender Corey Toy 7 minutes into the 1st period of the 1st game certainly threw coach Dylan’s plans into disarray as he had to restructure the lines accordingly.
Here’s Stan Scott’s report on the opening weekend …
Saturday was the start of our AIHL 2014 campaign and the day started in style with The Bad Piper blowing out rock tunes on the bagpipes to a packed house. The game for the Thunder started a tad slow – the Ice already two games into the season came out with competitive games under their belt as well as momentum. Thunder were playing with one import less with Justin Fox still in playoffs in North America and like last season, we expected a difficult time to start with.
When the Thunder settled and started having some drive, just seven minutes in a deflected puck took out import D man Corey Toy, fracturing his orbital bone in three places, putting him out for the weekend, and leaving us with just one outfield playing import. It was always going to be difficult to create scoring opportunities after that and maintain puck control.
After losing 3-0 on the Saturday, we addressed a few things for Sunday and Coach Dylan had a better response from the players. Again, not having Toy and Fox on the ice took away a lot of possession but we did create a lot more opportunities, we just unfortunately never put them away.
It is very early days in a long season and we know we have a great squad and some top players coming into the line-up over the next few weeks. Matt Dugas in goal was outstanding for us and Stuart Stefan looked very composed. When our full import quota arrives I am sure we will start putting wins on the board. Our local talent showed that they can compete very well against a fully stacked team like Melbourne Ice which was very inspiring, and it also showed we have great depth. It was also a testament to our development program seeing Shaun Tobin, Jamie Woodman, and 16 year old Keiran Webster make their debuts, all doing exceptionally well.
To our loyal Thunder fans who were fantastic in both games, I would say remember last season we lost 5-3, 9-3 and 13-2 in the first games. We will always have tough starts as we start later than everyone else and with less imports but by mid season we will be back where we belong, this is our year!