Thunder Record Important Win over Newcastle

The Perth Thunder have stormed through to register an important win, defeating the Newcastle Northstars 4-1 at Hunter Ice Skating Stadium on Saturday night.

Peter Di Salvo prepares to save for the Thunder Photo by Rhys Lavender

Christian Ouellet scored two goals in his Thunder debut, while goaltender Peter Di Salvo stopped 34 Northstars shots en route to his fourth win of the season, and head coach Dave Ruck was pleased with the win.

“Overall I think we executed our game plan very well tonight I thought,” Ruck said.

The Thunder were forced to kill a number of penalties to record the win, including a five-minute major penalty to Per Daniel Goransson and a two-minute five-on-three.

“It is something that has hurt us this year so far, taking penalties and getting scored on shorthanded,” Ruck said. “We got a few penalties, which slowed our flow down, and we were a little bit on the back foot after that, but I was glad we were able to come out of that period without getting scored on.”

The Northstars were seemingly slow and struggling to gel on the ice, outskated by Perth and unable to get past their defensive lines, which frustrated forward Matt Marantz.

“We thought we controlled most of the game, we made some mental mistakes and that’s on all of us. We kind of left (goaltender Nick Mizen) out to dry there,” Marantz said.

“We should have shot more, but sometimes you have to give credit to the other team,” Marantz said. “I was out there and they did a really good job of defending for most of it, (but) we should have got some more shots to the net.”

Lightning struck fast in the opening minute of period one, with Jessyko Bernard scoring early, and the Perth Thunder led 1-0 right through to the third period.

Coming out stronger in the second period, Northstars couldn’t capitalize on their opportunties and it remained a scoreless period, but a third period power play goal for Joey Harcharik saw the Northstars crowd erupt as they leveled the score at 1-1.

Soon Perth took advantage of their opportunities, with goals from both Christian Ouellet and Ben Breault giving Perth a 3-1 lead.

With an empty net in the final minutes of the period the Northstars tried to lift with a man advantage, but Ouellet sealed the 4-1 win, lobbing the puck from the neutral zone for the final Thunder goal.

The Thunder now travel to Sydney to take on the Bears on Sunday, while the Northstars play host to the Sydney Ice Dogs.