Belfast are a good team (albeit with a couple of issues at the minute) but we simply didn't let them play their game tonight. That was as solid a perfomance as I've seen in the past couple of years, had it not been for Shane Owen we'd have been approaching double-figures.
You could argue that Bowns won't ever get an easier shutout than that against Belfast, but his performance in the first leg arguably won us that game. We didn't have to chase the tie, we got the early goal to settle us and to be honest other than when they were on the PP Belfast never really troubled us. Midway through the second period I looked at the shot map and Belfast had had only 1 shot on net in that period, and it had been a speculative one from the boards.
I could go though the whole team with compliments but as others mentioned, Morrisonn looks to be settling in very, very well. Players who come from a higher league don't realise how much extra time you can have on the puck here, but I think tonight he showed he did. A couple of times he regained control of the puck and instead of getting rid of it straight away he kept hold and waited for the pass, or even carried the puck out of danger and into the neutral zone.
His calming, experienced influence also seems to be working wonders with Jardine who is also playing with a lot of confidence alongside him and is starting to look the player we hoped he would be.
You could argue that Bowns won't ever get an easier shutout than that against Belfast, but his performance in the first leg arguably won us that game. We didn't have to chase the tie, we got the early goal to settle us and to be honest other than when they were on the PP Belfast never really troubled us. Midway through the second period I looked at the shot map and Belfast had had only 1 shot on net in that period, and it had been a speculative one from the boards.
I could go though the whole team with compliments but as others mentioned, Morrisonn looks to be settling in very, very well. Players who come from a higher league don't realise how much extra time you can have on the puck here, but I think tonight he showed he did. A couple of times he regained control of the puck and instead of getting rid of it straight away he kept hold and waited for the pass, or even carried the puck out of danger and into the neutral zone.
His calming, experienced influence also seems to be working wonders with Jardine who is also playing with a lot of confidence alongside him and is starting to look the player we hoped he would be.