The Kitmart Dundee Stars are preparing to head into their 20th season and to celebrate this landmark campaign, we will be posting some articles each week that look back at every past season and catch up with some former players and coaches.

By Kris Smith

To start off week seven of our ‘Look Back’ series, we will be taking you back to the 2007-2008 campaign, which was the club’s seventh year in existence and their third season of competing in the Northern League but they then began competing in the Scottish Premier Hockey League.

The Stars played 40 league games that season, 16 in the SPL and 24 in the Northern and they achieved a third place finish in the SPL before coming second in the Northern League.

Dundee’s biggest rivals, Fife Flyers again won both league titles and there were again no changes to the teams competing in the Northern league.

However, the SPL was made up of the tops clubs in Scotland and the five team league was contested by Dundee, Fife, Edinburgh Capitals (SNL team), Solway Sharks and Paisley Pirates.

After both regular seasons had concluded, Dundee had an overall record of 26-0-13-1 (wins-ties-losses-overtime losses) and had scored 210 goals and conceded 144 over the 40 matches.

 

 

The Tayside club qualified for both post-season tournaments and in the SPL playoffs, their third place finish put them up against Edinburgh in the Semi-Finals and they advanced to the Final after a 14-7 aggregate win.

However, the Stars met their old foes, the Flyers in the Final and were defeated 11-8 on aggregate and it was a similar story in the Northern League playoffs, as the Stars qualified in second place and knocked out Whitley Warriors in the Semi-Final with a 9-5 victory.

They again met Fife in the championship match and were beaten 5-2 but in that season’s cup competitions, Dundee reached the finals of both the Scottish Cup and the Scottish Autumn Cup.

The Stars Autumn Cup run began with a 4-1 victory over the Scottish Under 20’s team and then an 8-5 aggregate win in the Semi-Finals against the Pirates.

Then in the Finals, they met their usual opponents in Fife but this time they came away with the silverware after a 3-3 draw in the first leg and a 4-2 victory in the second game.

Whereas in the Scottish Cup, the Stars came up against the Flyers in the Quarter-Finals and drew 5-5 in the first leg before they prevailed with a 6-4 win in game two.

They then blew past the Scottish Under 20’s team again by 16 goals to 2 and in the Final they beat Solway 7-4 in a one-off match to lift the trophy.

That season’s top point scorer was Fifer, John Haig with 88 points after he scored 42 times in both leagues and assisted on a further 46 goals.

Also, enforcer, Liam Greig was the most penalised player on the team that season with 125 penalty minutes.

 

 

Roger Hunt was still at the helm and led the team as Head Coach for the fifth consecutive campaign and in his roster that season were a lot of big names from Scottish ice hockey.

Netminders, Craig Arthur and Matthew Michie defended the Stars net and in front of them were some new big names like, Billy Hogg and Milan Bendik but there were also a number of returning blueliners, such as Sam McCluskey, Scott Plews, Willie Nicolson, Craig Phillips and Jeff Marshall.

Meanwhile the Stars held a lot of firepower up front with consistent threats in John Dolan, Haig, Iain Robertson, Gordon Latto and Kris Petrie.

Next we will be bringing you a look back at one Star Player from the 2007-2008 season and that will be released Wednesday at 12pm!

If you want to be a part of the historic 20th Dundee Stars season then you can buy your season tickets by contacting [email protected]

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Trade-Mart Dundee Stars Team
49 Games
19 Wins
23 Losses
7 OT Losses
45 Points