By Kris Smith
After last night’s 3-2 overtime loss to the Guildford Flames, the Stars now travel south to Surrey to face the Flames once more and look for redemption.
An early first period goal helped the road team put the pressure on the Stars but they answered back with two straight goals, coming late in the second period and at the start of the third. However the Flames struck back in the dying moments before grabbing the winner just less than one minute into overtime.
Carl Ackered, Jesse Craig and Rhett Rachinski were all on the scoresheet for Paul Dixon’s men and it was Marc-Oliver Mimar and head coach Omar Pacha who found the net for Dundee.
Both teams showed a strong powerplay output with the Flames punishing the Stars twice from three opportunities. Dundee scored on their only man advantage of the night.
Both teams are ranked low in the powerplay and penalty killing standings, the Surrey side have a powerplay percentage of 17.6% and have successfully killed 71% of their penalties, whereas the Tayside team, had a lower powerplay percentage of 16.4% but a higher penalty killing percentage of 72.2%.
The special teams can be pivotal in tonight’s match as both teams showed last night just what they can do, Guildford have 17 powerplay goals for and 21 against, meanwhile Dundee have 11 powerplay goals for and 17 against.
Defenceman Carl Ackered was highlighted as a dangerman before the game, he has found the net regularly, scoring 8 goals and setting-up 13 in 14 games, he is the teams highest scoring defenceman and added 3 points (1+2) to his tally last night..
Travis Fullerton stopped 33 of 36 shots he faced, he continually made saves that kept Dundee within reach of the game but his luck ran out on the final goal. His opposite only had to deal with 17 shots as most of Dundee’s shots were blocked by the Flames defence but Chris Carrozzi made 15 saves to help win his side the extra point.
Mikael Lidhammar made his return to the DIA on his birthday but this time was sitting on the away team’s bench and enjoyed his sides overtime win to make his birthday, that little bit more special.
Talking to Stars TV after the match, Omar said: “It’s frustrating, because we did a lot of good things and there are positives but we didn’t get the win at home.
“Guys created a lot of chances and tomorrow is a must win for us, we need to go there, we need to execute the game plan and we need to create those chances again and berry them. It is a great opportunity to go right back at it we need the two points tomorrow.”
