Tale of the Tape - Adrenaline @ Lightning

This week on tale of the tape, picking up an upset win last weekend against the Mustangs breathed a bit of life into the Adelaide Adrenaline’s unlikely push for Finals – and now they make the trip to Brisbane to take on the Lightning. These games make up the second-last homestand for the Lightning, and they’ll want to take the chance to collect points and continue the chase for a top two spot, amidst a mid-table logjam.

These games will also keep the attention of the rest of the league, with a possibility that four other teams will punch their ticket to Finals this weekend, depending how results fall.

Overall in 2025

So far in 2025

Brisbane have been a clear contender for all of 2025 so far, but in recent weekends have been a victim of the tight positions in the middle of the ladder – dropping from 2^nd two weeks ago, to 4^th now. For Adelaide, it has been a fairly familiar story as they keep trying to break a Finals drought stretching back to 2012.

At least they won’t have to go far into the memory to know how each other plays – with the last two games between these two being on July 5^th and 6^th in Adelaide. Over that weekend, the banana-benders came away with a pair of wins – 7-4 and 4-2, respectively. Despite the scoreline, Adelaide comfortably outshot Brisbane in both games – with 73 shots to 56 over the two games.

The Brisbane imports dominated their scoring (more on that here), with Tanner Hopps picking up four goals and two assists, while both Batu Gendunov and Alex Campbell had 5-point weekends. For locals, Sasha Rapchuk had four points. For Adelaide, their efforts were led by Coy Prevost (2G, 1A) and Nathaniel Benson (3A).

At the other end of the ice, Cale Dolan stopped 45 of 54 shots on the weekend, and was pulled late in both games to chase an equaliser. For Brisbane, Matus Trnka got both starts and turned away an impressive 67 of 73 shots.

Longer history

Over the 10 meetings between the teams over the past two and a half years, the Lightning have definitely had the upper hand – winning seven in regulation, and one in OT – with just two wins for the croweaters.

An unusual quirk is that both teams have had the exact same number of shots on goal – an even 312 apiece over the ten games, though this doesn’t even out the goal scoring. Brisbane have averaged 4.2 goals per game, while Adelaide have only managed 2.8 – which they’ll be looking to improve on.

When it comes to special teams, Brisbane’s advantage continues. They have a powerplay that has been successful 22.5% of the time, compared to just 15.9% for Adelaide.

Period by period

Something to keep an eye on this weekend will be the first period. Adelaide’s first period is their best by a wide margin, while it is Brisbane’s worst performing – so don’t be surprised if the Adrenaline get out to an early lead. Unfortunately for them, in the second period it swings wildly the other way – Adelaide score 1.2 goals a period less than their opponents, and Brisbane outscoring their opponents by 0.2 goals (they only period in which they do).