By Kris Smith
Tonight, the Taysiders head south for their first visit of this campaign to the SkyDome Arena as they have their third clash with Coventry and both sides have picked up 4-3 wins in Dundee so far.
The Stars clinched an extra point in overtime at the first meeting before the Blaze came back across the border to win in a shootout but Kevin Moore’s men saw their recent six game winning streak snapped by three straight losses against Sheffield Steelers, Belfast and Cardiff.
The Stars currently sit eighth in the league table with 13 points from 19 games, which is just one point behind their Scottish rivals, Glasgow Clan but six points off of Nottingham Panthers in sixth place.
A mid-week trip to Northern Ireland turned into disaster for the Stars as they went 4-0 down inside nine minutes before Jake Elmer netted what would be their only goal of the night in a 7-1 defeat.
The Stars will have Spencer Naas in their line-up tonight as he begins his second stint with the club after returning to Tayside on Thursday, after starting the season off with Freiburg Wolves of the DEL2.
Looking ahead to this weekend’s matches, Stars Head Coach, Marc LeFebvre said: “The first thing is that we cannot feel sorry for ourselves, the results have not been anywhere near where we want to be as a team lately.
“In saying that, we have a great team here and once we have everybody healthy and slotted into the line-up properly, we saw earlier in the season what we are capable of.
“Once we have a full complement of guys then I have choices to make as to who will play every night and it will bring great internal competition, which starts in practice and carries into the games because guys will need to step up if they want to be in the line-up every night.
“We are not just here to make the numbers up, we are here to get into that top eight and win the playoffs, that was our goal at the start of the year and that has not changed.
“Are we in a playoff spot right now? Yes, but that is still not anywhere near where we want to be in the standings and now, we have some guys back healthy, we can start getting them fighting for their ice time again.
“For the most part, we have been working our tails off and just not getting the results we wanted but how we played in Belfast and how we started that game is unacceptable.
“We need to get back on track this weekend and we can do so against a team that we have played two pretty hard games against, so far this season in Dundee.
“We know as a team, Coventry work extremely hard and that is probably the difference between us and them and how they have climbed the standings, because they just do not quit and keep playing hard every night, so I expect no different from them tonight.
“Everybody has to buy-in to get this thing back on track and there is a long way to go in the season but there is no better time to start than right now before Christmas.”
Face-off for tonight’s road game in Coventry is at 7pm.
