The Adelaide Adrenaline flew to Newcastle to compete on Saturday night, defeating the Northstars 3-2 in a shootout.
Adelaide found themselves battling from behind throughout the game, with Newcastle’s Francis Drolet putting the home team in front twice with first and second-period goals.
Daniel Chen scored for Adelaide in the last minute of period one to tie the game going into the first period.
Captain Joey MacDougall reflected on the tough start for Adelaide, telling Hockey Hype Australia, “Coming and playing on the road after a flight and a two-hour bus ride is always a tough start to the game; we got off on the back foot, but we fought through that in the first.”
Julian Friederich would equalise the game on the powerplay with just over two minutes to go in the second period. MacDougall reflected on this moment, sharing, “We fought through their second goal and then just maintained through the third. It was what we wanted to do. It was our game plan, to just come out and play gritty, hard hockey and not make it easy for them at all.”
Coach Kaden Elder shared, “We were really happy about our special teams tonight. We did a good job on our penalty kill, and our powerplay [bore] down tonight. We ended up getting a tying goal, which led us to winning in the shootout. We’re really focused on systems, power plays, and penalty kills, getting guys to buy in during practice to simulate what happens in games.”
The third period and overtime was scoreless, and it would take seven rounds of shootout before Adelaide’s Kaden Elder scored the game-winning goal and secured two points.
A seven-round shootout is not common in the Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL), so for any team, it can take effort to stay mentally on top. MacDougall shared, “We try to keep it pretty light, especially in a tense situation like that. Guys come back to the bench, and they’ve missed or don’t get the shot they want, and you kind of crack a joke about it, and we had two really good goalies at either end.”
“It was a great goal by Elder at the end, so it was entertaining for the fans,” finalised MacDougall.
Rylan Toth has been standing on his head for Adelaide Adrenaline, and Newcastle fans were treated to his performance, “Toth is phenomenal, he’s an unbelievable goalie, and he made a whole bunch of great saves for us tonight, which kept us in that game,” shared Elder.
“Having him back there gives us tons of confidence,” continued Elder, “knowing that if one of us makes a mistake, we know he’s there to back us up, and if something happens to him, he knows we’re there to back him up.”
On Sunday, Adelaide will take on the Bears in Sydney, “An out-of-division game, those points mean a lot,” began MacDougall, “so our thing is we just go in, go shift by shift, and we play as hard as we did today. I think we can come up with a good result. Sydney’s a good team, but I think we’re slowly proving that we can play with any team in this league.”
“We might be close to the basement right now, but we’re fighting our way to the top. Just see what we can do. It’s just inch by inch, really, and we make our way through it all.”
Elder emphasised the positives of the game against Newcastle, sharing, “I think our neutral zone was a little better today than it was last weekend; we were getting pucks deep, forechecking, winning battles and playing a lot of offence. We played more of a cycle game down low and made them chase us, which is something we strive at with the speed we have on our team.”
Adelaide Adrenaline face the Sydney Bears at Macquarie Ice Rink on Sunday, 14th July.
