By Kris Smith
The Stars will host the Patriotes tonight and on Sunday evening as the Canadian’s finish off their UK tour after playing Nottingham Panthers and Manchester Storm at the weekend, where they won both games, and will also face Fife Flyers on Saturday night.
Dundee did previously host a team from the Canadian USports league many years ago as they welcomed Concordia Stingers to Tayside for exhibition games but this will be the second time a Canadian university side has faced off against the Stars.
Marc LeFebvre’s men have so far won all of their preseason fixtures with an opening weekend pair of victories over their Tayside rivals, Fife Flyers as they defeated them 4-2 at home on Saturday night and 6-4 in Kirkcaldy on Sunday.
The Stars has seven different scorers so far with Domenic Alberga firing Dundee into the lead on Saturday before Alex Tonge, Brendan Harms and Brett Gravelle joined in.
Then on Sunday, Keanu Yamamoto, Zach Tsekos, Gravelle, Jake Elmer (2) and Tonge all found the back of the net in the road win over Fife.
Meanwhile the Patriotes were 2-1 winners in Nottingham on Saturday with Kaylen Gauthier and Felix Lafrance providing the goals and Charles-Antoine Lavallee and William Grimard splitting their time in the net across both games.
Marc-Etienne Hubert’s side then defeated Manchester 6-5 in Altrincham on Saturday with Vincent Milot-Ouellet, Loris Rafanomezantsoa, Zachary Gravel, William Dumoulin and Jeremy Martin firing them to victory.
Speaking ahead of tonight’s game, Stars Head Coach, Marc LeFebvre said: “They are going to be a fast team, they will be in shape and they are always competing for a national title.
“They lost in the national final last year and they have an experienced group, who have had some good results so far here in the UK and they will give us a good go tonight.”
He continued: “They are getting ready for their season as well, so they will give us a good challenge and we know what to expect, the USports is a great hockey league back in Canada and some of our players have played in it before they turned pro, so it will be a great competitive match.”
Canadian forward, Alex Tonge who hit two goals at the weekend against Fife also shared an insight into how the Stars dressing room are feeling ahead of tonight, adding: “We are pretty confident, although we do not know exactly what these guys will bring as we have never seen them before but our group feels good and we are looking forward to tonight.
“We just want to be feeling good before we get into the actual regular season and a few more wins would be great but it is just ultimately about getting our confidence and getting comfortable with each other.”
Face-off for tonight’s game is at 7:30pm.
Dundee (2-0-0) 10GF – 6GA
Tonge 3pts (2g, 1a), Tsekos 3pts (1g, 2a)
Fiske: 53 svs – .898 SVS% – 3.00 GAA
UQTR (2-0-0) 8GF – 6GA
Dumoulin 4pts (1g, 3a), Milot-Ouellet 2pts (2g, 0a)
All images: Derek Black.
