By Luke McGinnis
Scott Dutertre’s men are coming off a three-point weekend which saw them pick up the first win of their 2026/27 campaign against the Glasgow Clan at home on Saturday before suffering an overtime loss on the road to the Fife Flyers the following night.
Rasmus Nousiainen led the way with a hat-trick against the Clan, Keaton Jameson, Travis Ewanyk and Brodi Stuart also found the back of the net over the weekend, while Matt DeBoer scored his first professional goal.
Carl Stankowski impressed in net, making a combined 71 saves and posting a .922 save percentage over the weekend.
“I definitely want it to get four (points) next time,” began Dutertre. “Even though we got a point, I wasn’t happy with our performance against Fife, we need to clean up some things in our defensive zone and generate some offence.”
The Belfast Giants currently sit at the top of Group B in the Challenge Cup with ten points, having won five of their first six games including two over the Stars.
Their lone loss came last Sunday, as they fell 4-1 to the Glasgow Clan at Braehead Arena.
The last meeting between Belfast and Dundee saw the Northern Irish side skate away with an 8-1 win. JJ Piccinich scored a hat-trick, Mike Lee recorded four points, and Kaleb Pearson, Morten Jensen and Patrick Guay all enjoyed a multi-point outing.
Maxim Eliseev opened the scoring just seventeen seconds into that matchup, while Dominick Jaglar earned EIHL Team of the Week honours with his performance against the Giants with a .933 save percentage and allowing just two goals on 30 shots after coming into the game in relief of Vladislav Pestov.
Four Giants currently sit in the top five of Challenge Cup point scoring, J.J. Piccinich (11), David Goodwin (10), Scott Conway (9) and Mike Lee (9). Piccinich also leads in goals (7), Lee’s nine points lead all defencemen, and David Goodwin leads the league in points per game (2.50).
“Brad (Herauf) had some video on our defensive zone, and we looked at some good things we were doing, so for us if we play within those details we’ll be okay,” added Dutertre. “The other thing that has stymied us in games is we haven’t generated enough shots on net at times. We looked at the goals from the weekend and out of fifty-six of them, only four or five were passed cross-ice, everything else was just getting pucks to the net and crashing. It doesn’t matter where a team is sitting in the standings, they’re not doing anything special and we want to try and show our players that we don’t need to be pretty. If we just get the puck to the net and crash we’ll have some success.”
Faceoff is scheduled for 7:30pm at the Dundee Ice Arena.
