Devils Vs Braehead Clan - 14.09.2013

10th Sep 2013 | Posted by Simon Rafferty

Saturday night the Devils are in action at home taking on the Braehead clan at home.  The Devils seemed to have the Clans number last season taking the series 4-2 after a turbulent season saw the Clan struggle to find consistent form.

Over the summer it was all change at the Clan with Ryan Finnerty taking over as coach after his exit from the Steelers.

For an in-depth look at the Clan’s line up we’d suggest that you check out the fairly excellent Chasing the Dragons blog season preview series here http://chasingthedragons.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/ten-teams-ten-days-2-braehead-clan/

The Clan got off to a shaky start on the opening weekend losing both games starting on Saturday at home to the Stars in the Challenge Cup.

The opening period saw both teams creating chances however the better of these were coming for the Clan. The Clan had lots of early pressure but had a goal disallowed for having a player in the crease. With neither team able to get the opening goal the period ended 0-0

The second period was every bit as tight with neither team able to find the opening goal. It eventually came the way of the Stars as Nico Sacchetti netted at 28.52. The Clan drew back on level terms with a strike from Matt Haywood at 32.53. This was how it remained for the remainder of the period.

The third period was no different from the first two as the game remained tight and it looked as though one goal would seal it for either team. That turned out to be the case as Jerry Pollastrone fired into the net for the Stars at 49.27 to put the visitors in front for a second time.

Despite pulling goaltender Jones for the extra skater in the final minute the Clan failed to find the goal that would have taken the game into overtime.

Final Score - Braehead Clan 1 - 2 Dundee Stars

Sunday saw Coach Finnerty’s men make the trip to Hull where they gave the Stingrays their first win of the home campaign.

A good open first period had plenty of chances at either end but only one goal, that coming the way of the Stingrays when James Chilcott scored his first ever Elite League goal at 10.48.

The second session saw a purple patch of the wrong kind for Clan as Stingrays hit a powerplay goal and two short handers in the space of five minutes to take complete control. Jereme Tendler on the powerplay at 28.28 made it 2-0 and then on the same penalty against player/coach Sylvain Cloutier for delay of game both Guillaume Doucet 32.02 and Derek Campbell 32.59 stunned the visitors by extending their sides lead to 4-0.

An early powerplay goal for Clan by Kevin Bergin (His 100th Elite league goal) at 41.08 gave the visitors some hope of a comeback but Stingrays were in no mood to give up what they had and the game was killed when Doucet scored on the powerplay at 48.14 for 5-1.

Clan did have the last say when Matt Towe netted with 20 seconds remaining but this was no more than scant consolation for a well beaten side at this point.

Leaving the final score at Hull Stingrays 5 – 2 Braehead Clan

Speaking after their opening weekend in the press Clan Coach Ryan Finnerty had this to say -

“We knew this was our one game at home and we wanted to leave with a bang. We did enough to win but we didn’t command and take over the game and that was frustrating.”

"I’m not getting too high or too low here but we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”

“It’s disappointing as we wanted to put on a good show for our fans and unfortunately it didn’t go our way.”

 “It’s not going to be easy. We’ve got some tough games and we’re going into some tough buildings. Right now we need to handle this adversity and see what sort of response it brings out of the players."

“These guys have all played in areas where they’ve been away for long stretches. I think it’s a good opportunity early on for us to bond and get together and play against the grain in other buildings.”

For my money the ones to watch for the Clan this year will be Ash Goldie and Joel Champagne upfront and ex Panther forward turned D Man Kevin Bergin on Defence.

There may also be a few familiar faces in the Clan Line-up with Ex Devils defencemen Kenton Smith more than likely still with the Clan for this weekend games and the arrival of Chris Frank icing as his season in Australia is  now finished.

The Devils got off to a bit of a better start than the Clan having taken two points on the road Saturday in Fife before going down to the Giants at home 7-2 on Sunday for full details of this game you can read a full report here http://www.cardiffdevils.com/news/fixtures/cardiff-devils-vs-belfast-giants/

The Devils go into the second weekends games with a question mark over the fitness of starting net minder Dan LaCosta who didn’t play Sunday after taking a skate to the head in the Devils season opener up in Fife in a game that saw him return to the line up from a concussion suffered in a pre-season friendly. At the time of writing its unknown, but seems very unlikely, whether LaCosta will feature in next weekend games.

We will be running the “ridiculously childish and disgustingly biased” Match Night Live service for this game, expect name calling, slurs and one eyed bias in epic proportions, at the usual location of http://www.the-inferno.co.uk/mnl

We’ll be updating you live from the Inferno “News desk” at the rink thanks to the great guys at Analysis Technologies. If you’d like to chip in with a comment or make a score prediction you can contact us at matchnightlive@gmail.com.

Also if you can't make it down and you don't want to miss any of the action and reading the game isn’t enough you can get the game with commentary from Brent Pope on Devils live TV here  http://www.cardiffdevils.com/ for a jolly reasonable £8.