By Kris Smith
This weekend Dundee Stars welcome the Cardiff Devils to Dundee Ice Arena on Sunday night, face off 5.00pm. You can buy your tickets HERE or at the Dundee Ice Arena Box Office!
Last Week
The Stars started the weekend brightly with a fantastic shootout win over Guildford Flames at Dundee Ice Arena.
Dundee Stars 5 Guildford Flames 4 (after penalties)
Last Saturday saw Dundee claim their first win outside of regulation this season, as they scored twice to win 2-1 on penalties.
Omar Pacha’s men have only been forced into extra time three times in this campaign – an overtime loss to Sheffield Steelers back in September and a shootout defeat to Nottingham Panthers two weeks ago.
The Stars have now won three of their first four meetings with the Flames this season and have outscored Paul Dixon’s men 18-15.
Egils Kalns scored Dundee’s second goal on Saturday and that was his third against the Surrey side, while Beauregard was credited with the game winning penalty shot to give him his second game-winning-goal of the year.
The two sides will meet again in early February.
Cardiff Devils 5 Dundee Stars 2
On Sunday, the Stars were stopped from claiming their first win of the campaign against Cardiff, as the Devils won their third successive game against Dundee.
Kevin Dufour and captain, Matt Marquardt were the only scorers for the Tayside team.
Dufour bagged his second goal of the year against the Welsh club, while Marquardt beat Ben Bowns for the first time this season.
Both of the Stars goals were scored whilst on the powerplay and that takes the total to 36 goals (19.57 per cent) in all competitions this year.
However, two powerplay goals against takes that total to 29 but the penalty kill percentage remains impressive at 82.10.
Dundee will dance with the Devils again exactly one week later, as Cardiff come to Tayside on Sunday.
(Picture: David Williams)
Point Streaks
Four players have managed to carry point-streaks into Week 21, with Marquardt and Colton Kroeker leading the way with six points in the last four matches.
Jordan Cownie and Kalns follow them with a point per game over the last pair of matches.
Milestones
There are numerous milestone moments coming up this week and the standout stat is that Head Coach and General Manager, Omar Pacha will take charge of his 150th league game for the club.
Meanwhile, on Sunday past, captain Marquardt made his 200th Elite League appearance down in Cardiff and in the next game, he will play in his 850th professional game.
Forward, Matt Carter will make his 400th appearance at professional level this Sunday at home to Cardiff.
Also, Alex Schoenborn skate in his 150th pro game on Saturday and it is also his 10th game in a Stars jersey.
Then, Cownie will play in his 150th Elite League match on Sunday and he only requires one assist for 20 helpers this season.
Defenseman, Jagger Dirk will ice in his 100th pro league game down in Coventry and the Canadian is only one assist shy of 25 for the season.
Whereas, Kalns requires a single point for 25 points in his first EIHL campaign and fellow, Elite League debutant, Anthony Beauregard hit the 40-point mark last week after scoring the match-winning penalty shot on Saturday.
Week 21
There are two fixtures for the Tayside team this week, as they go on the road to Coventry Blaze on Saturday before hosting Cardiff Devils on Sunday.
Coventry Blaze
This will be the fifth meeting between the two sides and the West Midlands club have won three of the past four meetings in this season.
The Stars have allowed 16 goals and netted 14 across the four matches and four of Dundee’s goals were scored by Kevin Dufour.
Cownie, Marquardt and Drydn Dow have also contributed two goals each for the Tayside team against the Blaze.
Special teams have proved extremely important in these fixtures and the Stars have found some success on the powerplay with a success rate of 21 per cent (3 goals on 14 attempts) and they have also stopped Coventry from scoring on 82 per cent of man advantages (14 out of 17).
Cardiff Devils
This Sunday, the Stars will play the Devils again and will aim to end the Welsh club’s three game winning-streak against Dundee this season.
The Devils have out-scored the Stars 17-10 but Pacha’s squad have yet to give up in any match and have forced their opponents to stay alert until the final buzzer.
Dow still leads the side in goals against Andrew Lord’s men with three tallies but
Three Devils have each scored three times against the Stars this season and they are; Stephen Dixon, Matt Pope and Joey Haddad.
Saturday’s away match in Coventry will face-off at 7pm and Sunday’s home game against Cardiff begins at 5pm. You can buy your tickets for Sunday’s home game HERE.
Thanks to www.starsstats.co.uk/ which was created by Dave Sweetin (@dave_sweetin) and Elite Prospects for making some of the information used in this article available online.
