Inferno Match Preview - Devils Vs Clan 20/09/14

17th Sep 2014 | Posted by Simon Rafferty

It looks like we are in for a great night of Hockey in the bay on Saturday as Ryan Finnerty brings his Braehead Clan to take on the Devils. This will be the first meeting between the teams after last season saw the Clan take the series against the Devils 3 – 1.. but that was then and this is now!

Last weekend saw the Clan in action twice taking wins away in both Belfast (3-4) and Edinburgh where they shut the Capitals out (0-3) leaving then 4 from 4 in all competitions after a pre-season that saw them split results with Italian side Asiago.

Upfront the Clan have picked up a few real gems in from other teams signing Stefan Meyer from the Steelers and Leigh Salters from the Panthers in addition to newcomers to several newcomers to the league in Matt Keith, who has a good level of AHL experience and spent last spent last season in Austria playing for EC Salzburg and Scott Pitt who spent last season Eispiraten Crimmitschau in the DEL2.

Adding to these new Import signings the Clan picked up Ben Davies from the Devils over the off season and retained the services of Matthew Haywood, Derek Roehl, Lee Esders, Neil Trimm, and Tristan Harper.

All in all the Clan look to have a great mix of size and skill in the team and will have scoring throughout the forward lines. In addition to this they have a strong physical presence on the team with addition of Salters, Meyer and Keith. 

The Clan are running with five import Dmen this season with three new imports joining the two returnees from last season Ex Devil Chris Frank (for his second season with the Clan) and Scott Aarsse.

Joining the Clan are newcomers to the league Jamie Fritsch who has a decent level of AHL experience and spent last season in Italy, Zack Fitzgerald who played in the AHL last season and Ryan Kavanagh who’s played in the DEL and split last season between the ECHL and the Tønsberg Vikings in Norway.

In addition to these Import signings they have added young British talent with the addition of Zach Sullivan from the Bison.

In nets the Clan have retained the services of Kyle Jones who had a reasonable season for them last term with regular season stats of 89.9% save percentage and 2.91 Goals but who really shined for the Clan in the play-off games running a 95% Save percentage over the 3 games, in addition to Kyle the Clan have added Ex Devil Joe Myers as back up.

Going purely on stats the ones to ones to watch for the Clan so far this season look to be -

Neil Trimm  with 4 Goals

Leigh Salters with 4 Goals

Lee Esders with 2 Goals

Stefan Meyer with 2 Goals

In Nets Kyle Jones is off to a good start with a 90.8% save percentage and Goals against average of 2.93 so far this season.

Both teams look to be at full strength going into the weekend at the time of writing with Matt Meyers due back to the squad for the Devils after missing the last few 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

If you’d like to chip in with a comment or make a score prediction on the night you can contact us at matchnightlive@gmail.com.