U15 Stars Nip 99ers
The U15 Stars/Tigers travelled to Graz on Saturday afternoon and came away with a very close 2 - 1 Victory. The small squad of thirteen skaters and one netminder needed to be extra concentrated and disciplined if they wanted to come out on top of the team they barely beat at home in st. Pölten 6 - 5. Graz, known for its quick transitions and stretch passing did exactly what the Stars expected and were extremely dangerous on the break with Gaspar and Nagy leading the attack most of the afternnon. The Young Stars team played a very sound defensive first period and played verywell in thier own end and a solid Sämi Prosenz kept the 99ers off the scoreboard. Up front the Stars managed some opportunities of thier own and managed to capitialize late in the first frame on the power play when Marcel Hack jumped on a juicy rebound off of a Max Paczkowski point shot and chipped it over the prone Graz goalie for a 1 - 0 lead.
The second period started with a powerplay for the road team but instead of controlling the play it was Graz shorthanded who had the first three opportunities and luckily for the Stars failed to score. The momentum seemed to shift in the 99ers favour and after being hemmed in for a fulled minute and having to ice the puck the Stars called a timeout to regroup. The short breather seemd to settled the team down and shortly there after Florian Baltram grabbed a Hack pass from the side of the net to give his team the a 2 - 0 lead mid way through the frame. After a scrammble in front of the Graz net team captain Paul Hochmann lost his cool and took a tem minute misconduct penalty followed by a match penalty for running into the referee trying to make sense of the call. This left the Stars shorthanded for the last five minutes of the second period and cost them the services of thier captain for the remained of the game. The Stars fought like tigers and a great performance by Prosenz in net held Graz off the scoreboard.
In the third the small team now was forced to defend the lead and although they did have a couple of great chances by Zitz and Dieber their main goal was to win the defensice battles all over the ice. With ten minutes to go Graz finally scored off of a Gaspar defelection and got back to within one. A tremendous team effort by the Stars group the last half of the final period secured the win and a happy team celebrated one of their best efforts of the season thus far.
Coaches Comments: Its hard not to be extremely proud of the boys today, they worked for the full sixty minutes and supported one another all over the ice. It is always tough to win on the road and but when the team is as committed to defense as much as we were today you will always have a chance to win. I was especially happy with our goalie of course and also our four defensemen who not only played very well in thier own zone but they did not allow the 99ers to use thier counter. We are starting to understand what it takes to win and winning the close ones like this is great for moral and confidence. We play WEV Ice Lions on Thursday evening in Vienna and I am sure we will continue where we left off in Graz!
