Mustangs Now in Third Place

Originally published on theaihl.com

A three-goal first period has seen the KODIAK Melbourne Mustangs defeat Perth Thunder 5-2 at O’Brien Group Arena on Saturday night.

In their final home game of the season, the Mustangs jumped out to a 3-0 lead early to take the wind out of the Thunder’s sails and move ahead of them on the AIHL ladder with two games left.

In identical fashion to Friday night’s game against the Melbourne Ice, an early offensive blitz from the Mustangs had them on the board in the first.

Ben Davies and Brett Ferguson both had chances early for the Mustangs, only to be denied by Peter Di Salvo.

The Mustangs piled on the pressure but finally broke through on the man advantage with Jamie Woodman off for slashing. Jamie Bourke let a partially screened shot go that beat Di Salvo to make it 1-0 with 6:40 remaining in the period.

Ferguson would score just under two minutes later, after Simon Kudla was shown the door for slashing. The Mustangs’ power play clicked again and Ferguson grabbed his eighth power play goal of the season to make it 2-0.

Davies would make it 3-0 on a sublime set-up from both O’Kane and Ferguson, which caught Di Salvo out of position.

Davies struck again just 90 seconds into the second period and for the second time in two games, the Mustangs found themselves out to a 4-0 lead.

Perth struggled to find opportunities to score. Andrew Cox and Jonathon Bremner both had opportunities to put the puck in the net, only to be denied by Aleksi Toivonen.

They would finally break through on a brilliant give-and-go move from Landon Oslanski, who buried it past Toivonen to bring the deficit back to 4-1. Thunder closed out the period with the momentum but were unable to add to the score line, despite out-shooting the Mustangs 13-9 in the second period.

Any momentum the Thunder earned was soon cancelled out by Ferguson’s second goal of the game with 15:41 to go, making it 5-1. However, penalty trouble allowed the Thunder to get back into the game through a power play goal to Grandmaison just three minutes later.

Thunder had two further chances on the power play but failed to capitalise on either and eventually time became their enemy. The Mustangs sealed three points and moved into third above the Thunder on the AIHL ladder.

Mustangs’ head coach Maxime-Langelier Parent was pleased with the result and the way his team has responded down the playoff stretch.

“Our problem all season has been slow starts and now in the last few games we have changed that. We had a slow second period but we shut them down in the third and got the win,” said Parent.

“We just have to keep playing the way we are. It’s all about the process and we’re not going to change the process when we’re playing well.”

The Mustangs now head to Sydney to face both the Bears and Ice Dogs to determine their AIHL Finals fate.