The Melbourne Mustangs have continued their late-season push towards an AIHL Finals berth with a shutout performance from Fraser Carson propelling his team to a commanding 5-0 win over the Perth Thunder at Perth Ice Arena Saturday night.
Three points from Vadim Virjassov (two goals, one assist) helped to celebrate Vinnie Hughes’ 200th AIHL game in style and dismantled a Thunder side still hoping for a top-of-the-table finish.
The win was the fifth in a row for the Mustangs, with goaltender Fraser Carson, who made 33 saves for his fourth career shutout, crediting a change in mindset for their blistering late-season form.
“(It’s) just attitude,” Carson said. “We’re focusing on having really good practices and that’s translating into our games, the boys are just having a lot of fun.”
Mustangs head coach Brad Vigon said he has noticed the change as well.
“Early on in the season the other teams were gunning for us and we just weren’t matching that level of intensity,” Vigon said. “We were able to stay with them but in the end they wanted to beat us more than we wanted to beat them.”
“Now we’ve got all our ducks in a row, we’re healthy, we’re starting to gel a bit so that makes all the difference.”
Thunder head coach Dave Kenway was disappointed in his team’s performance, and warned his players against complacency in the run-in to a potential finals campaign.
“You’ve got to start looking at the big picture, where you want to finish and what you want to achieve, and having bad performances at this end of the season just doesn’t fly,” Kenway said. “We’ve had a good season, been on top of the ladder, second, third, but the teams below are making a push towards the finals and you have to be aware of where you are.”
Vigon was pleased with the way his team was able to control the ice throughout the night and stifle the quality of the Thunder attack.
“We wanted to take away the middle of the ice from these guys and force them to go wide, force them to dump pucks and chase after it instead of being able to carry the puck through and I thought we did a good job,” he said.
The Mustangs seemed in control of the game from the opening two minutes after Jamie Bourke scored on a Vadim Virjassov assist to take the early lead and silence a vocal Thunder crowd.
The two teams then traded scoring chances, with the goal post coming to the Thunder’s rescue on a Pat O’Kane power play shot, while Toni Kluuskeri had a short-handed breakway denied by a red-hot Fraser Carson.
Jeff Grant made the most of a defensive-zone turnover from the Thunder on a power play to tally an unassisted goal and stretch the Mustangs lead to 2-0 at the first intermission.
Joseph Hughes extended the lead to 3-0 just past the half way point of the second period on a rebound opportunity, as the Mustangs continued to deny the Thunder a chance to get their offensive game going.
It took Virjassov less than two minutes of the third period to tally his first of two goals, after another defensive zone turnover from the Thunder saw him stretch the lead to 4-0 with an unassisted goal.
Virjassov then capped a dominant performance by the Mustangs, capitalising on some hard work in the offensive corner by Matt Stringer resulting in second goal for Virjassov, completing the scoring in a commanding 5-0 win.
Fraser Carson was thrilled with the performance of Virjassov, noting that his energy helps to lift the Mustangs.
“I’ve never seen a guy who loves hockey more, he’s the most excited guy on the ice every time he scores a goal, any time anyone scores a goal,” Carson said. “It could be a guy’s first goal and he’ll still be the most excited player on the ice. He loves it.”
The Thunder made a late goaltender change, with Mark McCann replacing Mark Guggenberger in net with a little over four minutes remaining, but the rookie faced only one shot in his time on the ice.
The Thunder won the shot count 33-25, but struggled to create quality chances to shoot on Carson, which the Mustangs goaltender was happy about.
“The boys made it easy at times, we’ve been trying to work harder in our defensive end and that showed tonight,” Carson said.
Brad Vigon said he was happy with his team’s form of late, with the Mustangs pushing towards an improbable finals berth and the chance to defend their AIHL Championship.
“We’re finally starting to play with the same form we played with in the back half of last year,” Vigon said. “Unfortunately it’s taken us 20 games to get there, and hopefully we haven’t left it too late, but all we can do is control our own fate and win the rest of our games.”
Dave Kenway was circumspect after the loss, with the Thunder’s focus shifting to a pivotal weekend series against the CBR Brave.
“You have to look at where your team went wrong and what you have to improve on to move forward, build on that, and get the boys back to playing how we need to be playing,” Kenway said. “Next weekend is a big one for us, we’ll have a big week of training and get the boys focused to get two wins in Canberra.”
The Thunder play the Brave in Canberra next weekend, while the Mustangs travel to Sydney to take on the Bears and Ice Dogs.
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