After being down early, things only got worse for the travelling Flames who gave up 4 3rd period goals to close the books on a 7-0 defeat at Dundee Stars.
Connor Sills started it off with what turned out to be an early winner at 8:38 and Gabriel Desjardins added another in the 17th minute to be in front by a pair at the end of the opening frame.
A little over 5 minutes into the middle set, Kyle Haas was on target to make it a 3-0 gap, and scoring then paused for the rest of the period and 13 more minutes into the 3rd
On the home stretch of the final stanza, the flood gates opened at 53:48 when Charlie Combs extended to 4. 36 seconds later Dillon Lawrence added another and after nearly that exact same time gap Spencer Dorowicz chased Flames starter Kevin Lindskoug who faced 37 shots. The Swedish netminder was relieved by Adam Long for his first action of the new campaign and was introduced to the scoring less than a minute from time with Lawrence’s 2nd of the evening that capped off the one sided scoreline. Adam Morrison had the Stars shutout by turning aside all 30 shots sent in his direction.
“What are you going to say about a night like that?” asked Head Coach Paul Dixon.
“We could go through all our mistakes or puck mis management, giveaways or a number of things that we would all agree were not up to the standard we all expect of ourselves, but Dundee came out firing and really ready for us so credit to them for their showing.”
“We have a very long journey home and the challenge of getting enough sleep while on the move, so we have to immediately focus on what we need to do to make something happen when puck drops tomorrow.”
“I think the most important thing is that we don’t spend a lot of time in our heads trying to work this out because frankly there is nothing to work out. It was a bad night. At this stage, all it will do is exhaust us further and bring us down and we need to be up and ready for tomorrow.”
“These guys have a lot of pride in this room, and I know they will bounce back with a performance that is much better than tonight, and if I could push fast forward and get to puck drop now, I would.”