On Wednesday night, the Trade-Mart Dundee Stars began their pursuit of a place in the Challenge Cup Semi-Finals at home I n the first leg against their bitter rivals, Fife Flyers and were looking to reach the final four for the first time in club history.

By Kris Smith

Both sides had to compete for a lead to take over to Kirkcaldy without key players as Dundee iced without Hugo Reinhardt, Ben Brown and Jonathan McBean.

Meanwhile, the Flyers were missing Janne Kivilahti, Janne Laakkonen, Chris Lawrence and Lucas Sandstrom, but did debut new signing, Liam Blackburn.

The game began with both sides hungry to play a physical game and not give their opponents an easy night but that mentality was quickly set aside as Dundee had to defend an early penalty with defenseman, Erik Näslund being punished for a holding foul in the second minute.

With the Flyers on the powerplay, blueliner Christian Hausinger stepped up to fire the Fife into lead as his high shot took a deflection as it passed through a number of bodies before landing in the Dundee net.

The intense rivalry atmosphere soon set in and both teams began playing with a lot more aggression but again the physical play would be put on hold as the visitors doubled their lead in the 12th minute, forcing Jeff Mason to use a timeout to settle down his Stars side.

Debutant, Blackburn would net his first goal for Fife as he reacted quickest to a blocked pass that dropped straight in front of the Stars goal and the Canadian left Anton Svensson with no time to react.

However, Dundee had found a more productive approach after their timeout and Swedish winger, Johan Eriksson got them back within one goal just 27 seconds after the Flyers had made it 2-0.

A similar finish to Blackburn’s but Eriksson would receive a perfectly placed pass from behind the goal and whack it straight past Shane Owen from between the face-off circles.

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