The Ice tied up top spot several weeks ago, and have been the team to beat for most of the year. After an opening weekend stumble against the Rhinos, the Ice have camped out in top spot. The Finals Preview takes a look at how they’ve managed this, and how they’ll chase a 5th Goodall Cup.
2025 Record
Overall record (20W – 2OTW – 4OTL – 2L) (0.810 PCT)
- Record against finals-bound teams (13W – 2OTW – 3OTL – 2L)
Story of the season: Clear frontrunner all season, can they take home the Cup?
Key stats
Figure 1: Melbourne Ice Percentage – overall, and against Finals-bound teams.
Any way you cut it, the Ice have been the best team across the whole 2025 season, and they’ve earned the day off on Friday to be well-rested for the Saturday game.
Figure 2: Melbourne Ice goal scoring – versus league average, overall and against finalists.
Figure 3: Melbourne Ice special teams performance.
Strengths
Scoring – the highest scoring team in the league, the Ice average 6.5 goals per game. This is driven by six different players scoring 18 goals or more this season, led by David Booth and Kolton Shindle with 34 and 33 goals, respectively.
Goaltending – Tatsu Ishida leads the league in both save percentage (0.908) and goals against average (3.371). Coming into his second AIHL Finals series, he will have a point to prove as well.
Special teams – The Ice have the best Powerplay and Penalty Kill percentage in the league. Their powerplay is successful 33.6% of the time, and the PK kills 84.5% of penalties – the only team above 80%.
Late in games – With a third period average goal differential of +1.286, the Ice are the only team who outscore their opponents by over a goal, and they maintain the best goal differential in the final five minutes of games – where they are twice as strong as any other team.
Weaknesses
Not much – The Melbourne Ice in 2025 is a very strong team, without any real glaring weaknesses, which is why they’ve led the league all year. I feel a bit dirty after writing that.
Defence – in relative terms, the Ice are less dominance on defence, allowing 35.6 shots per game which is ranked 5th in the league.
Scoring spread – the flipside of having high-scorers at the top, the Ice do have a relatively high concentration of scoring from their top end. 61.4% of their points come from their top five scorers (Booth, Erdugan, Shindle, Caruana and Bourke), which is the 3rd highest in the league.
When they win
Goaltending is the biggest factor (overall save percentage is 0.907 in wins, 0.863 in losses) for the Ice. The other key metric to keep an eye on is the powerplay – which scores on 36.2% of opportunities in wins, but only 18.2% in losses.
Player to watch
David Booth. It’s pretty hard to go past the bloke putting up 4.5 points per game as being key to the fortunes of the Ice.
Under the radar: Christian Pansino has a knack for popping up with a handy goal in games, and with 8 goals and 2 assists, is a shoot-first player. It wouldn’t surprise if he grabs an important goal or two over the weekend.
Key Stats
Top 10 scorers
Goalies
Projected lineup
For this lineup, Tyrone Bronte is the potential addition. If available, he slots easily onto that top line. This then moves Lliam Webster to a line with Ellesse Carini and Tommy Powell.
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