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HELLYER LADDER

Team	GP	W	L	PTS
Thunder	5	4	1	12
Ice	3	3	0	9
Bears	4	3	1	9
Mustangs	2	1	1	3
Ice Dogs	5	1	4	3

RURAK LADDER

Team	GP	W	L	PTS
Northstars	3	3	0	9
Lightning	5	2	3	6
Adrenaline	2	1	1	3
Brave	5	1	4	3
Rhinos	4	0	4	0

SCORING LEADERS

Jeremiah
Addison (PER)

Player	Points
Aiden Wagner (NNS)	16
Wehebe Darge (NNS)	12
francis Drolet (NNS)	12
Zane Jones (PER)	11

GOALIE LEADERS

N Novysedlak (BRE)

1.000

Goalie	SV%
Tatsunoshin Ishida (MIC)	.952
Rhys Pelliccione (PER)	.950
Leo Bertein (PER)	.937
Jeremy Friederich (ADE)	.912

Ice rebound to top of the ladder against Bears

Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - Submitted by Tina Girdler

Melbourne Ice ended a three-game slide to return to the top of the AIHL ladder following a 6-4 victory over the Sydney Bears at Sydney Ice Arena on Sunday.

Ice coach Brent Laver said that his team was buoyed by their finish the night before against the Newcastle North Stars.

“It actually started yesterday because we were pretty unlucky,” Laver said. “Things were not going our way but I thought we played quite well. So we’d already built up the third period yesterday where we started to turn it around and today was about trying to keep that momentum going.”

Laver said he had told his charges to “come out and win the third period [and] take that momentum into tomorrow’s game” after going down 5-0 to the North Stars at the end of the second period on Saturday. Although losing to Newcastle by a final score of 7-4, Melbourne recaptured their rhythm and energy.

Sydney Bears were in a similar position having outscored the Brave 4-2 in the final period on Saturday in Canberra, before falling 8-6.

The game plan for Melbourne was simple according to Laver.

“The Bears have got some ability to score and a good goaltender so the goal is to always get pucks in deep and try to have a net presence,” Laver said. “Pick some trash along the way if you can because he’s a pretty good goalie. He’s pretty hard to score on from outside.”

The first period was even with Jeremy Brown scoring his first AIHL goal for the Ice midway through the first before Bears captain Michael Schlamp equalized with a power play goal. However, the Ice would go to the first break with the lead after Tommy Powell responded with his own power play goal 59 seconds from the first break.

Powell was a dominant force throughout the game claiming a hat-trick with a goal in each period as well as a pair of assists.

Despite an early goal to the Bears in the second through Ben Di Marco, the Ice’s dangerous power play quickly regained the lead through Matt Armstrong, before Powell added his second to leave the game at 4-2 after two.

The Bears were made to pay for early indiscretions in the second, a worrying trend for Bears coach Vlad Rubes.

“Well we’ve had the problem all season so we are a team that needs to stay out of the box,” Rubes said. “At the moment we are staying out of the box then we are not. That’s why we get penalties and we get scored on.”

With two coincidental penalties throughout the second period, Laver said that his team enjoyed playing four-on-four, leading to Powell’s second goal.

Powell’s third 80 seconds into the final period gave the vistors a 5-2 lead. However the Bears weren’t about to give up with Schlamp adding another power play goal before Ben Di Marco added his second to close the gap to one goal for the final 10 minutes.

Unfortunately for the home team, the Ice scored their sixth goal through a Jeff Smith rebound minutes later with the scoreboard unchanged throughout the rest of the match despite the Bears desperation to crack the Ice’s defence.

In Cameron Todd’s first game back from 2014 IIHF Inline Hockey World Championships, the Bears star was in for some rough treatment. Todd was cross checked with only six seconds remaining in the match and had to be escorted from the Ice.

The Bears Sean Hamilton Steen said it was an unfortunate incident to see Todd need to be escorted from the game.

“It was great to see him back in the line up.” Steen said. “A little bad what happened to him there but he takes a couple of hits. I didn’t really see what happened so I can’t really say anything about it but hopefully he’s all right and still play in the line up.”

Steen, who had a hand in all four Bears goals, said he was working to reignite his goal scoring after going five games without a goal, despite being on a four-game point streak.

“It’s tough, I’ve got to get my scoring touch back,” Steen said. I’ve been hitting a lot of posts so I’ve just got to bear down and get them in the net.”

In a weekend that the Bears scored 10 goals but conceded 14 to extend the Bears’ losing streak to eight, coach Rubes said that defence and ill-discipline are holding his team back.

Steen also commented on the defensive issues facing the Bears.

“We’ve just got to pick it up,” he said. “Make sure we pick up our guys in front of the net and keep plugging away. We kind of seem to be letting go of our guys and not picking them up. So we just got to bury down on our defence as well.”

Next week, both team have double headers with the Ice facing the CBR Brave in Melbourne in a one-vs-two match-up. Laver already had his sights set on preparing for the week ahead.

“We’ve obviously already had Canberra in Canberra so we’ll go back and have a good look in at tape, have a look at the stats and the notes we took from that,” Laver said. “We’ve got a fair idea on how they set up so we’ll put a plan together to try and prepare. It’ll be a great battle seeing how it comes with first versus second.”

Sydney Bears will face local rivals Sydney Ice Dogs in Liverpool for the second derby between the teams before hosting Perth Thunder at Sydney Ice Arena.

“We just need to keep working,” Rubes said. “We need to get out of the stage where we repeat same mistakes all the time, which is happening at the moment. If it’s half the team working hard and then half the team causing mistakes and goals, it’s a problem.”

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