The Excel Hull Stingrays were well beaten by a clinical Edinburgh Capitals performance in the Scottish sides first game of the season. In doing so, the Murrayfield based side inflicted the Stingrays, who were without Adam Knight, Curtis Huppe and Lee Mitchell as well as Ryan Jorde who sustained a wrist injury mid-game after blocking a slapshot, with one of their largest ever Elite League losses.
The Stingrays went down two goals early in the first period for the third home game in a row as a mazy Michael Beynon run saw Scott McKenzie score on his debut and that was quickly followed another goal a minute later, after Pavel Gomenyuk had failed to get to grips with Owen Fussey on the boards the resulting two-on-one saw Simon Lambert one time his first of three goals.
With the Stingrays trailing by two goals, Edinburgh player-coach Doug Christiansen mistimed a questionable hit on Slava Koulikov and went off injured as a result of either the hit or Sylvain Cloutier's immediate reaction to jump on the Canadian after the dangerous check.
The second period saw the Capitals continue to dominate the lackluster Stingrays, who were again failing to finish their checks as they did with so much success against Nottingham in pre-season.
Lambert finished his second of the night on 26 minutes before Jorde went off after blocking a rocket of a slapshot from point blank range with his wrist.
Despite the injury, which put the Rays four players down, the fightback finally began to materialise for the Rays as a good five minutes of pressure finally paid off, a Pavel Gomenyuk slapshot from the point sneaking past Cody Rudkowski, playing his first game for more than a year, in the Edinburgh net.
Shaun Thompson hit the crossbar for the Stingrays, with a shot that looked, to many, to have crossed the line, before Jeff Glowa capitalised on a nice pass from youngster Matty Davies to reel the Caps back to a one goal lead.
However, the fight was ripped from the home side less than a minute later as Owen Fussey netted on 33 minutes with a debatable kick into the net that was deemed acceptable by referee Andy Carson.
That goal was clearly straw that broke the camels back, especially as the Stingrays had brought it so close seconds earlier, and the Scots knew that, scoring their second in 42 seconds through Darius Pliskauskas, who making his second debut for the Edinburgh side.
The rest of the game was all but a formality as Scott McKenzie registered two goals in 22 seconds to complete the Capitals first hat-trick of the game and to end Tommy Sandahl's night between the pipes, with Andrew Jaszcyzk replacing the Swede for the Stingrays.
7-2 down is never the best time to come into a side, let alone a side that is sinking and quickly losing all desire to be on the ice, and that showed in the Stingrays defence, or lack of, as the backup faced four shots, allowing goals from Chris Allen and Simon Lambert, who scored the Capitals second hat-trick goal of the night.
Stingray Stats
- Stats: Glowa 1+1, Gomenyuk 1+0, Davies 0+2, Reynolds 0+1.
- Sandahl: 36 shots, 7 goals
- Jaszcyzk: 4 shots, 2 goals
- SOG: 41-40
- PIM: 18-12
Best
Matty Davies proving he is more than up for the challenge of Elite League ice hockey, the Stingrays brief comeback, some of very nice looking Edinburgh goals.
Worst
The lack of fight in the Stingrays, the final period in which the home side collapsed, Doug Christiansen's attempted hit on Slava Koulikov.
F Block Blog MOM
Stingrays: Matty Davies (0+2) The Brit proved why he should be given a more regular shift for his hometown side, recording two assists, including a brilliant set up for Glowa's goal, and showing the energy which much of the team missed.
Edinburgh: Simon Lambert (3+1) The French-Canadian bagged a hat-trick and his speedy breakout, which was a regular occurrence in the Capitals offence, helped his side take an easy win out of the Hull Arena.
Stingrays Verdict: 3/10
This was just a poor game from the whole Stingrays team. Matty Davies, making his first regular shifts with the Rays filling in for messrs Huppe and Knight, and Tommy Sandahl, who had little or no defence in front of him, were the only players to come out with any real credit. Jeff Glowa tried hard again and showed more of his infamous determination and Konstantin Kalmikov did his best attempts to be a one more team offensively but that really was it.
Lax, sloppy and lethargic are the words that immediately spring to mind, whilst, as previously mentioned, they again failed to show any kind of physicality that paid dividends in recent weeks.
As Sylvain Cloutier mentions below, it was an unacceptable performance, particularly the way the team collapsed after it was made clear they were, in no way, going to win the game with the Capitals fifth and sixth goals.
Cloutier's Comments
"We've got to step up our game 150 per cent against Coventry. Okay, we were missing Adam Knight and Curtis Huppe, but there are no excuses. We have four defencemen back there and nine forwards. We have to go into the game ready to play and ready to battle."
