Once again, Sylvain Cloutier's side came out strongly, Jereme Tendler scoring six minutes in after a deking the Steeldogs final defenceman to slot home past Russian born Bri Dmitri Zimozdra.
With Kurtis Dulle and Jeff Smith bolstering the Rays D to six strong - as opposed to the four of Sunday night - defensively the Rays looked solid and were breached only once. Edgars Berbris wheeling in and neatly netting past former teammate Ben Bowns following a giveaway from Tomas Valecko to level the scores just two minutes later.
In a fairly scrappy game Cale Tanaka then gave the visitors their second lead of the evening guiding the puck home after a Janis Ozolins shot failed to find the net. Jason Silverthorn then extended the Elite League sides lead to 3-1 with an assist going to youngster Kieran Strangeway - who took a big hit from Steeldogs player-coach Andre Payette for his troubles.
The final scoring of the night came after 24 minutes when 17 year old Sam Towner - who recorded a hat-trick on Saturday night against the Stingrays NIHL side - showed composure to slot home on a Tendler pass to record his second point of the night.
The main talking point of the final 36 minutes as far as the Stingrays were concerned came early in the third period as Tendler received a slash across the wrist from former Stingrays Pavel Gomenyuk while on an unsuccessful breakaway attempt.
The Stingrays goalscorer sat out the remainder of the game and visited hospital to ensure the slash - which was not penalised by referee Jonny Liptrott - hadn't done any serious damage. Test results, however, revealed that the Canadian's wrist was badly bruised and not broken as first feared.
As far as the game was concerned, the Rays weren't as polished as they likely will be later in the season, however, defensively they looked more assured and offensively clinical with the chances presented to them than perhaps their 11/12 - though it is still pre-season.
Of the win player-coach Cloutier said:
"We were delighted to win as the Steeldogs gave us two very good games. But we're under no illusions. Realistically, pre-season friendlies don't mean anything. After all, we won the P & O Cup last year and everyone suddenly thought we were going to win the league. We just wanted to work on a few things, stay healthy and get ready for Nottingham on Saturday."Once again, the levels of performance from the young Brits including Strangeway, Towner and Robson was impressive.
While Towner was on a line with Silverthorn and Tendler and put in a man of the match worthy showing, the performances of Strangeway and Scott Robson as a relatively inexperienced defensive pairing will have again been pleasing for Cloutier.
Whether they are ready for a full-shift against the Nottingham Panthers in the Challenge Cup on Saturday remains to be seen and, presumably, depends largely on whether Shane Lovdahl receives his VISA and arrives in time.
The Rays now face an important week of training - with forward Dominic Osman due to fly into the country in the next few days - before they kick off their 10th Anniversary season this weekend.
