Tale of the Tape - Lightning @ Northstars

After collecting all six points on a trip to Adelaide last weekend, this weekend the Brisbane Lightning take a short trip south to take on the Newcastle Northstars in a double-header that looks likely to shape the Finals race. This is the first time the teams meet this year, and will the high-flying Lightning continue their push for second position and a night off at Finals, or will the Northstars continue the form that saw them topple the Mustangs on Sunday. The tale of the tape looks at how these two match up against each other.

Overall in 2025

So far in 2025

2025 has been a bit of an odd season for both of these teams. In the Brisbane camp, they have been great at finding ways to win enough to be sitting in 2^nd spot on the ladder, despite being outscored across the season and giving up over 10 shots per game to their opponents. For perennial contenders, Newcastle, the story is much the opposite – they concede less shots on goal than any team in the league, have scored exactly as many goals as they’ve allowed, yet are down in sixth spot.

This suggests that we might see the ice tilted to the Northstars this weekend in terms of action – but that doesn’t mean the result will go that way. The twin goaltending of Matus Trnka and Jake Doornbos have been good enough to lead the Lightning to their current standing, with the overall team save percentage of 0.886, behind only the Ice and Tatsu Ishida, and the Mustangs, who have 0.887.

An area of common ground for these two teams is in the importance of their imports. Brisbane rely more heavily on their imports than any team in the league, with 68.0% of their points coming from imports – and 78.8% of goals. Not quite to that extreme, but Newcastle have the third-highest share of points from imports (the Mustangs sit between) with 46.0% (and 43.7% of goals). The Newy imports have also been the second-highest scoring contingent in the league, averaging 2.292 points per game – behind only the Melbourne Ice.

Shutting down each team’s star imports is going to be a Tale of the Tape key to success this weekend – which isn’t exactly a shock, though for Brisbane it is stark that almost half of their points come from their top three scorers.

Longer history

Since the Lightning joined the league in 2023, the Northstars have dominated the head-to-head, who have five regulation wins, and one OT win from the eight games. One regulation and one OT win for the Lightning rounds out the ledger.

This has been driven by strong special teams – with a Powerplay at 34.0% a real stand out, contributing to Newcastle outscoring Brisbane by two goals a game.

There has been a bit of feeling in these games as well. Brisbane pick up more penalty minutes against Newcastle than any other team, with both teams collecting over 25 PIM per game (the Northstars only have more penalty minutes against the Ice).

Period by period

Both of these teams have been slow out of the blocks in 2025, conceding more first period goals than they score – and both have a perfectly even goal differential for the third period. If either can jump the other and get out to a lead on the weekend, it will go a long way towards a victory.