Dramatic finish sees Stars go top

[ 0 ] January 22, 2012 | admin

Dave Jackson celebrates his fourth goal of the season

The Stars returned to action following the Christmas and New Year festivities on sunday 8th January in second place in the NIIHA. They travelled to Belfast to take on the Belfast Bruins, a familiar face was in goal for the Bruins with both clubs having agreed a transfer for Jody Willamson until the end of the current season.

The Bruins started much brighter and got their first shot on goal less than ten seconds into the game to test rookie Stars goalie Janis Shumanis in his first senior game. With 10 minutes gone in the game the Bruins were 2:0 up and dominating all aspects of the game. The Stars called a time out at the half way mark of the first period and received a stern wake up call from the coaching staff.

Things did improve from this point albeit slowly, with four minutes left in the period Jaroslav Keri got the Stars first goal of the game on the powerplay. A minute later Martin Olas tied the game with his first of four goals to tie the game 2:2 at half time.
HT 2:2
Again the Stars started slowly and conceded an early goal 15 seconds into the second period. Minutes later and the Stars found themselves 2 goals down for the second time in the game. Player coach Stephen Lynch got his 12th goal of the season with fifteen minutes left in the game to draw the score back to within one, only for the Bruins to gain their third two goal lead minutes later.

The Stars seemed to finally find their skates with ten minutes left in the game and piled a lot of pressure on the Bruins goalmouth. Two goals 5 minutes apart tied the game 5:5 with less than five minutes remaining. The Bruins took the lead for the third time in the game after an unlucky bounce off the referee lead to a goal scoring opportunity.

Martin Olas leads the league with 31 goals at the half way point of the season

To their credit the Stars players moved on with the bad break and tied the game with just over three minutes left in the game. With less than two minutes left in the game it seemed all the Stars hard work might go to waste when the Bruins took the lead for the forth time in the game.

But in what had been such a dramatic goal scoring feast for those in attendance, no one was surprised that more was to come. Martin Olas scored his third of the day with 1 minute 30 seconds left, and then got his fourth with 18 seconds remaining in the game. The Bruins pulled there netminder for the extra attacker but the Stars held on to record a massive 2 point victory.

Afterwards the Stars coach spoke of the win:

We were very lucky to come away with this win today, we were lethargic right from the warmup and didn’t play anywhere our potential. The good sign is how we grind-ed out the win, to go behind so many times it would be easy to give up but we stuck at it and found a way to win. We have four weeks now till our next game and then they come thick and fast for the rest of the season, i told the team after if they want to achieve anything this season they will have to do a lot better that today.

Dramatic finish sees Stars go top

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