Matt Hewitt in goals for the Brave. Photo: David Tate.

The CBR Brave, despite a tumultuous week off the ice, have let their hockey do the talking in a 6-2 rout of the Perth Thunder on Saturday night at the Brave Cave.

The first period saw plenty of action as both teams looked to assert their dominance, and it was the Perth Thunder who broke the deadlock late in the first. The Thunder capitalised on the man advantage as Matt Harvey sat in the box, Landon Oslanski rifled a wrist shot from the point and beat Matt Hewitt above the blocker for a quality top shelf snipe and a 1-0 lead.

The Brave dug in and continued to grind and chip away at the Thunder defence which has been a question mark for the Thunder since the departures of Per Daniel Goransson and Rob Haselhurst. Goransson capitalised on the sustained pressure from the brave with a Darge dish from behind the goal to the top of the crease left Goransson with a tidy tap in to pull the score back to 1-1 in the dying moments of the first period.

An explosive 5 minutes during the second period saw the Brave stamp their authority on the game. Tempers frayed for the Thunder as Matt Buskas and Jonothan Bremner were sent to the showers early for a scuffle behind the Thunder net. The speed and silky hands of the Brave were on show as highlight reel goals from Ainar Podzins (2) and Trevor Gerling combined with the determination of Dawes and Darge cleaning up rebounds gave the Brave a 6-1 lead heading into the second intermission. The Perth Thunder had a mighty task in front of them heading into the third period as they looked to claw their way back into the game.

CBR Brave on the offence. Photo: David Tate.

The third period was a relatively quiet affair after the high octane second period, but the Thunder kicked off on the right foot as Jordan Brunt sat for a slash. Once again it was Landon Oslanski from the point after some beautiful passing from the Thunder set up for a carbon copy of the first goal, with Oslanski with the top shelf snipe to pull the score back to 6-2.

Perth Thunder Head Coach Dave Ruck was pleased with the Thunder’s efforts through two periods, saying “The two periods we put together, the first [period] was 1-1 and the third [period], we won 1-0 so you know we gotta look at it like look at that and say, when we are playing our game we can we can definitely win them all”.

Ruck continued and noted that the hockey gods were not smiling on the Thunder tonight.

“I felt that we had a couple of bad breaks. We had the referee trip our guy and they end up scoring. We had one go off a guy's foot and go in and when that happened the Brave pushed harder and it took us a few minutes to gather ourselves again. In those few minutes, that's when the goals came”.

CBR Brave Head Coach Rob Starke was pleased with the efforts of the Brave and spoke about capitalising on opportunities.

“I think it was another great team effort. We played well in all three zones and obviously we capitalised some great opportunities in that second period to widen the gap. We capitalised on some of the power plays and some good opportunities and that's what this game is all about capitalizing and opportunities but we did a great job creating those opportunities”.

Starke continued and spoke about the pride of the Perth Thunder, “Perth has a lot of pride, they're going to rebound. They're not going to want to come away from this weekend with zero points. They're going to work really hard for those three points and we'll be ready for them”.

Catch all the action as the Brave take on Thunder for game two Sunday 20th at 5pm. Secure your seat tix: http://aihl.net/1M97NUx