By Kris Smith
The Stars are currently four points ahead of Manchester Storm in the race for the eighth and last playoff berth for April’s postseason tournament, whilst the Storm have played 51 matches of the 54-game campaign, Dundee have only completed 50 matches and any points picked up this weekend against two of the top four clubs in the league table, would go a long way to securing the Taysiders fate.
Marc LeFebvre takes his side to Sheffield tonight as they go up against the Steelers, who are locked in a three-horse race for the league title with Belfast Giants and Nottingham Panthers.
The Stars have only beaten the Yorkshire club once this season and they caused an upset on their last visit to the Utilita Arena back in November with a 4-2 victory.
Philippe Sanche, Cole MacDonald, Domenic Alberga and Keanu Yamamoto provided the goals that night but in their most recent meeting in Dundee, just X weeks ago, Aaron Fox’s men took their revenge with a 10-4 thrashing of the Stars on Tayside.
Last weekend, Dundee were beaten 4-3 in their only outing as they were edged out on home ice by Coventry Blaze after going back and forth with the English outfit all night.
Spencer Naas, Brendan Harms and Yamamoto all found the back of the net but Jarrett Fiske and the Dundee defence have up one goal in each of the first two periods before allowing the Blaze a pair of goals inside the final 20 minutes.
Looking ahead to this weekend’s contests, Stars Head Coach, Marc LeFebvre said: “We just have to pick up points because we cannot sit back and allow someone else to do the job for us, we want to go in through the front door.
“We have a confident group after a few good days of practice here and we are going into a building that we have won in before, so the guys are confident of being able to pick up points but we are also aware of Sheffield and what they are capable of.
“They are in a title race themselves, so we know they will come out all guns blazing and we have to be ready for that.
“We just have to keep things simple and stay in the moment, that is all you can do.
“We are looking forward to this contest, it could be a playoff match up for us but you just do not know yet, so those things are going to be sorted out in the next 10 days.”
Face-off for tonight’s road game in Sheffield is at 7pm.
All images: Dean Wooley.
