Match Preview - Devils Vs Stingrays 23rd November

21st Nov 2011 | Posted by Simon Rafferty

The Devils face rivals the Hull Stingrays in Cardiff on Wednesday this week. The two teams have met twice so far this season in the Challenge Cup with the Devils coming away winners at home in September and drawing the Second leg in Hull in November.

The run up for the two teams into this game couldn’t be more different with the Devils taking  9 points form a possible 10 in their last five games whilst the Stingrays are coming off the back of a Seven game losing streak which the finally broke with a win on Sunday against new comers the Fife Flyers.

Saturday saw Hull lose their third consecutive game on the road to the Capitals who went ahead early in the first with a goal from Rene Jarolin, the Capitals then added a second goal from Tomas Valecko ( a former Cardiff Titans Player)  not long after to extend the lead to 2-0. 

The Stingrays pulled one back with a strike from Matt Davies at 14.04. However, the Capitals regained the their two-goal lead inside the last minute of the period as Peter Holecko (also a former Cardiff Titans Player) scored to see out the first period.

Despite chances for both teams in the second period, neither team could find their way to the goal so the Capitals maintained their two goal lead.

The third period was like the second period, neither team could add to their goal tally, and the Capitals held on for their second consecutive league win. Final score Capitals 3 – 1 Stingrays.

After the game Hulls Player-coach Sylvain Cloutier, back in the line-up in place of injured defenseman Dmitry Rodin had this to say

“It is so frustrating. We talked before the game about keeping everything out of the middle but then we had two turnovers and it cost us two goals.”

“It is driving me crazy that we can play so well defensively against Belfast, Nottingham and Sheffield and then go and play like that.”

“Give Edinburgh credit, they played well. They are not a walk-over team. We are professionals and there is something wrong if you are not ready to play and go to work.”

Sunday was a different story for the Stingrays as they played hosts to the Flyers at home in Hull in a game that they very much dominated.

In a scoreless first period the Stingrays outshot the Flyers 21 to 6 but couldn’t beat in form Garret Zelmack.
The nil all margin stood until the middle point of the second period before Dominic Osman who made the breakthrough for Stingrays. However, Flyers had to create offence to get back in the game and they did near the end of the second when Matt Siddall was on the mark to tie it at one all.

Zemlak in the Flyers net continued to deny increasingly desperate efforts from the home side in the third but he was beaten finally beaten when Jason Silverthorn fired home on the power play late in the third and then with just over a 2 minute to go Tendler added a third to seal the Stingrays a win.

Flyers did give themselves a glimmer when Danny Stewart scored on the power play at 58.11 but despite pulling there net minder there was no heroic comeback on the cards for the Flyers

 Player-coach Sylvain Cloutier had this to say:

“It was a massive win for us. We needed to get that feeling back of winning games and finding a way to win games.”

“The guys kept plugging away all night and to have nearly 60 shots on goal it shows you we dominated. But to have to give credit to their goalie – I think he is the best goalie in the league.”

“I am proud of the guys and we have to get ready for another tough week.”

Speaking about there chances this season last year’s top scorer for the side Jereme Tendler had this to say

“We have been playing some good hockey; we have been playing with every team. We just have to stick to our systems and things will turn around, I am not worried.”

“Everyone has to keep their heads up and as a group we have to stay positive. You can’t get negative because things will just go downhill.”

“The games when we have given up a goal in the last minute, it is unacceptable. Everyone understands that, we have been around long enough to know you have to play for 60 minutes.”

Top scorers for the Stingrays so far this season are Jason Silverthorn on 30 points, Jereme Tendler on 23 points and Frantisek Bakrlik on 22 points with secondary scoring from Derek Campbell and Dominic Osman.

The Stingrays seem to have had a run of bad luck of late compounded by a seeming loss of focus in the last few minutes of games seeing them lose one goal leads in the dying minutes of games. Having broken their losing streak, they will be keen to turn this around and grind out a win in Cardiff. We have to expect Hull to do what they also try and do steal an early goal or two and then trap the life out of the game.

The Devils last game with Hull was a feisty one so there may well be some scores to settle and after some comments made on a popular social networking site by Hulls net minder about Jeff Pierce and his purpose (Hat trick should shut him up nicely Jeff maybe add a spinning goal and a baseball style hit score just to be sure) I’d expect to see the Devils come out hitting and shooting looking to settle the score from last time.

Injury wise the Devils will be without Mark Smith and now have a question mark over Gerard Adams who will have an X-ray today on his hand which may well have been damaged on the face of a Coventry player at the Weekend. The Devils will also be without Chris Frank who completes his three game ban by sitting out this game.

For the Stingrays Cloutier is keeping his fingers crossed over Dimitri Rodin, who went to hospital for a check-up on a knee injury. He added: “We are getting him checked out. There is no swelling on the knee so hopefully that is a good sign.”

As always well be running the “Childish and amazingly Biased”  Match Night Live service for this game, at the usual location of www.theinferno.co.uk/mnl if you'd like to help out or chip in with some comments on the night please contact us at matchnightlive@gmail.com. You can also follow on Twitter for updates on @InfernoMNL

And don’t forget if you’re looking for somewhere to have a pint and a bite to eat before the game or a few beers afterwards the Pilot in Penarth is a short trip away and will also be open afterwards for post-match drinks, directions to the pub can be found here - http://www.the-inferno.co.uk/where-to-eatdrink/