Devils Vs Clan - December 15th

13th Dec 2012 | Posted by Simon Rafferty

Saturday see’s the Devils in their second match of the weekend taking on the Braehead Clan at home after making the return trip from Belfast where they are set to play the Giants on Friday.

This will be the third meeting of the year with the tally currently standing at a win a piece with the Devils losing at home in a shoot-out before taking the win in a high scoring return match away details of which can be found here http://www.the-inferno.co.uk/news/devils-clan-in-review/  The Clan come into the game having had problems on the road with only a single win from their last eight games while travelling.

We took a good look at the Clan roster at the start of the season which you can check out here http://www.the-inferno.co.uk/news/devils-vs-the-clan-sunday-16th/ since the start of the season the Clan have struggled a little finding the form that they were widely expected to have and have released Bobby Chaumont & Ryan Campbell and also seen the departure of defenseman Mitch Manu.

The Clan roster has been bolstered with the arrival of the somewhat injury prone Martin Tuma from Nottingham Panthers and they were expecting a new arrival in last weekend in forward Jesse Schultz who on very short notice opted to remain in North America leaving the Clan yet again under strength.

Last weekend saw the Clan in action once taking on division rivals the Dundee Stars. The opening period saw the Clan take the game to their hosts but they found Stars goaltender Nic Riopel in confident form. Stars took the lead at 8.40 with a strike by Tim Kraus but the Clan pressure did see them level at 10.00 when Matt Haywood fired home.

The second period was not quite so open and in fact saw only a single counter, this coming the way of Stars at 31.59 with Sami Ryhanen on the spot to score and see his side lead going into the third session.

Clan failed with almost four power play minutes right at the start of the period and were made to pay moments later as Bill Bagron extended Stars lead at 44.41. The next power play opportunity for the visitors was to see further misery as Stars effectively killed the game when Bagron netted on a shorthanded play. From then on in it was a comfortable skate to victory for the home side and a much needed confidence boost after their recent bad run.

Dundee Stats 4 - 1 Braehead Clan

Commenting on the game against the Stars Jade Galbraith on Twitter said “ Wow probably the worst professional game I have ever played”

In the Clans defence they do seem to be in a bit of an injury crisis in addition to the short bench with the following players currently injured.

- Ryan Watt will see a knee specialist in order to confirm the current situation with his injury, and determine the next course of therapy in order to progress his recovery.
- Martin Tuma will see a doctor again this week to assess the situation with his hand and determine if he can train this week, with the intention of playing this weekend.
- Matt Hanson is currently out due to concussion, sustained during the game against the Sheffield Steelers in late November.

Looking at the scoring for the Clan they are led by centre Ash Golide on 39 points ( 15 Goals & 24 Assists), ex Coventry forward Robert Farmer on 28 points ( 10 Goals and 18 Assists), the somewhat underperforming Jade Galbraith on 27 points ( 16 Goals and 10 Asissts) and Drew Miller on 25 points ( 12 Goals and 12 Assists). The ones to watch against the Devils look to Jordan Krestanovich who’s netted 3 goals on the Devils so far this season and  Ash Goldie who’s netted twice so far against the Devils.

In goal for the Clan Garrett Zemlak has done less well than expected with an 88% save percentage and a goals against average of 3.83 the worst in the league so far this season.

It was just the one game for the Devils last weekend as they faced the Panthers on Saturday night at home, in a game that saw them come off the worse in a Penalty shoot-out. Full details of the Match can be found at http://www.the-inferno.co.uk/news/it-was-a-close-one-/

The Devils scoring is still dominated by Mac Faulkner on 45 points ( 23 Goals, 22 Assists) his line mate Chris Blight on 35 points ( 10 Goals and 25 assists) and Stuart MacRae on 34 points ( 17 goals and 17 Assists). So far this season it’s been Stuart MacRae on 3 goals and  Mac Faulkner on 2 goals who’ve done the damage against the Clan.

This week has also some changes to the Devils line up with forward Devin Didiomete departing suddenly, hopefully we will go into the weekend at near full strength due to the likely arrival of new forward Jesse Gimblett the return from illness of Paul Bissonnette and possibly the return of Max Birbraer.

We will be running the “ridiculously childish and disgustingly biased” Match Night Live service for this game, expect name calling and one eyed bias in epic proportions, at the usual location of http://www.the-inferno.co.uk/mnl if you'd like to help out by texting updates (we’d be happy to hear from you) or chip in with some comments on the night please contact us at matchnightlive@gmail.com.

For details of upcoming away travel with Red Army Travel you can get all the information here http://the-inferno.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6212