The Newcastle Northstars came away with a split weekend winning against the Canberra Brave, and suffered their first loss of the season against the Sydney Ice Dogs.
A 6-2 victory in Canberra saw the Northstars win for the first time since 2017, in the Brave Cave. A curse many fans were eager to see get broken with a number of mooseketeers travelling to the game to support the team.
Northstars’ Assistant Coach Dave Ferrari reflected on the win, “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. They’re far from done but it felt good to win in that building. 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.”
The match on Sunday was much closer, and for the capacity crowd it was an intense, edge-of-your-seat game that went all the way to a shootout.
Northstars’ Head Coach Kevin Noble reflected, “We scored five against an import goalie. We put up a lot of great looks, enough to win a hockey game, but it just wasn’t good enough. There were a lot of individual mistakes, and we lost individual battles.”
“We deserve what we got in the end, with the mistakes we made and individual management with one-on-one stuff, but that’s what happens.” Noble finished.
Ice Dogs’ Head Coach Jason Kvisle shared, “I always knew we had a good team, and it will be even stronger when our national team boys come back and join us and I feel like tonight really highlighted that.”
“They just kept fighting,” Kvisle continued, “they never gave up. Even when they had the lead we took it back, and then we squared the end score. The tenacity that we showed and the ability to come back from 2-0 down are really positive signs for the club and team.”
Period one saw the Northstars take an early lead with goals from Wehebe Darge and Francis Drolet. Grant Toulmin was the first to respond for the Ice Dogs closing the gap, with Daniel Berno coming through to extend the lead before Ice Dogs Dmitri Kuleshov scored to take the game to a 3-2 score at the break.
The second period belonged to the Sydney Ice Dogs with goals two and three for Dmitri Kuleshov giving the visitors an edge at the second break and a 4-3 lead over the home team.
Assistant captain, Grant Toulmin shared “We played a really good game, it got away from us at the end but we knew what we needed to do and had everyone pulling their share and it couldn’t feel better.”
On Kuleshov’s second period goals, Toulmin shared, “He’s unbelievable. He’s an unbelievable offensive talent and that was on display tonight. He was just walking their d-men which is always fun for us to watch.”
“Dimmie has taken another step up,” head coach Kvisle stated, “if you look at his brother, Ivan, he also dominated out there tonight. Young kids like Jerry Zhou dropped two of the Northstars, and its those 1% things that help you win games.”
Northstars assistant captain, Patrick Nadin, celebrated his 200th AIHL career game on Sunday night and scored two crucial goals for the home team giving them the lead as the game moved towards the end. Grant Toulmin silenced the crowd with his late equalising goal in the third that took the game to overtime.
Assistant Coach Dave Ferrari shared, “We need to be better at defending. We won the race to five but we can’t also give up five. Being better defensively as a team and individually is important, as we lost too many battles on the rush. When you have a lead, you have to keep it.”
“He is one of those guys that wears the Northstars logo on his chest with pride,” Ferrari shared on Nadin’s milestone, “When you look at the numbers, not a lot of people have done that for the club, and he’s got a long way to still go and will hit more (milestones). He’s really committed to being available all the time and he’s still getting better.”
With no goals scored in OT, the game went to shootout. Up first, Wehebe Darge for the Northstars, saved by Arvid Ljung. Dmitri Kuleshov was up first for the Ice Dogs and successfully got his shot past Smart. Shots for Wagner, Toulmin were saved with the winning moment coming on the final save from Drolet’s shot for Newcastle.
“I’m happy but I’ve still got lots in the pipeline,” Kvisle shared, “I think its important to recognise the Hosen family tonight. Tina and Ralph are a big part of our club and the grief they would be showing right now is the hardest thing. I take my hat off to (Marcus), you can see he wasn’t his normal self-tonight but he battled up and he wanted to be here with his brothers.”
“The league and ice hockey in general is a real small place,” Kvisle shared on the moments silence held by the Northstars at the start of the game. “Ice hockey in general is a community and we’re all looking after Hosey and making sure he’s ok to play.”
Looking ahead the Northstars will reset and prepare to welcome the Melbourne Mustangs to Newcastle. “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,” shared Noble.
Assistant Captain Francis Drolet shared, “We were in front and we let the team go and take the lead, we will watch the video at training and be better next weekend.”
“We have a lot of good players but trips aren’t easy,” Drolet continued, “coming back from Canberra and getting up to play the next game right away takes a lot of you, so we need to control our energy a bit more.”
Ice Dogs goaltender, Arvid Ljung shared his thoughts, “I felt like we were slow at the start, but better in the last ten. They’re a good team who were undefeated before this game. We had a couple of penalties to kill off and I think we did good.”
The Northstars welcome the Melbourne Mustangs to Newcastle on Saturday 4th May and they will take on the Sydney Bears on Sunday 5th May.
Get your tickets from Northstars.thundertix.com
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