Northstars Tough Beginning to 2023 Season

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It was a tough weekend for the Newcastle Northstars who faced a strong Melbourne Mustangs on Saturday night and Melbourne Ice in Melbourne on Sunday night. The visiting team was running a short bench with 5 players in Spain representing Australia in the IIHF World Championships, and several import players still to arrive.
 
Despite Saturday’s 0-11 loss to the Mustangs, Head Coach Kevin Noble remained positive. “We learned a lot tonight. There’s a lot of good that came from tonight, you learn from the good and you learn from the bad and this is one of those moments when our young guys gain a lot of experience.”
 
“It’s a tough loss, there’s no way about it when you lose like that and the message to our guys is that it is a long season and the belief in our locker room is that while our leadership is overseas we’ll keep working hard and we can finish the season stronger than it has started.”
 
“In games like this, there is no blame on anyone. What we take from this are the things we learn about each of our players. Matt Montgomery is one of them, he had a really good exhibition game for us and he’s been good during practice and tonight he was really good in the third period. It was his first AIHL regular season game and he faced some really quality professional shooters in the Mustangs imports, and he stood tall.” Noble continued.
 
“There’s a lot of takeaways from a game like that and a lot of things we could say but from a coaching perspective it's one we leave on the ice and focus on tomorrow. We come back and play for the logo on the front and for our character and lay it all on the line.”
 
Sunday afternoon saw the Melbourne Ice and the Northstars came out fighting, and the first two periods proved evenly contested.
 
Leading 4-3 at the end of the third period, the Northstars’ spirits were high. Goaltender Matt Montgomery was fighting hard, and his performance stood out to Coach Noble. “Matt was good again tonight, honestly, he gave us a chance to win and that is just where his development is at. As a coach I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
 
Unfortunately, the third period did not go the Northstars way, with the home team taking the 8 - 4 victory.
 
“There were a number of penalties, and a couple of unfortunate calls our way but I didn’t think it was really indicative of costing us the game. To be fair, we just didn’t have enough tonight.”, Noble said.
 
“As I told the guys, tonight was a gutsy effort. Everybody from top to bottom had a significantly better night than last night and at the end of the day, that’s not the result we wanted. The points on the boards and in the standings are what matters, it’s a long season and we’ll work hard to come back.”,
 
With a two week break ahead Noble stated, “Following this weekend, we go back to work. It’s a long season and this is only two games. It’s early days and there is nothing else to do. We go back to work and climb out of this position.”
 
The Newcastle Northstars will face the Sydney Bears at Macquarie Ice Rink at 5pm on Saturday April 29^th.