In what has been a battling week in Scottish sport, it was perhaps going against the grain as Braehead Clan bowed out of the Elite League play-offs with a whimper.
The world of football has season opposing managers almost come to blows while team-mates go head-to-head on the pitch over the last few days, yet on a night of tension at the Braehead Arena Ryan Finnerty’s men were simply not up to the fight.
Going into this play-off quarter-final second leg 3-1 down against the Dundee Stars following Saturday night’s first leg, three goals on the night meant the Glasgow side’s aspirations of getting to next weekend’s play-off finals were brought to an abrupt halt.
“I’m obviously disappointed for our guys,” said Finnerty afterwards. “It’s tough these aggregate game and we didn’t give ourselves a great chance yesterday. It was arguably one of our worst games against Dundee’s best.
“Tonight we actually played better. The first two periods we just needed that early goal. You have to give Dundee credit, though. Our defence really struggled with their speed.
“You always have belief in your guys. That third one was tough, it came against the run of play and it made it really hard. Offensively we were very poor, last night defensively we were really poor.”
Going into the second leg having been outfought and outplayed in the first leg, Clan were instead outthought on home ice as a stubborn Dundee nullified any attacking threat the men in purple tried to pose.
Sporadic bouts of punch ups flared throughout the night as a mixture of passion, pride and frustration got the better of both sets of players. In the end, it was Dundee’s players who would land three knockout blows on the way to their first ever appearance at the Elite League finals weekend.
Confusion was the order of the day at the start of the second period as Stars netminder Joe Fallon was adjudged to have been playing with an illegally-big glove. A 20-minute penalty was imposed but the visitors were just a man down for two but the hosts could not take advantage.
Stars' opener arrived deep into the second period as both teams struggled to get their attacking game going. In the end it took until the 33rd minute for the deadlock to be broken, Cale Tanaka turning in a squared pass from Kevin Bruijsten.
This led to Braehead being booed off by their own support at the second break, something almost unheard of in the sport compared to football. It failed to have the desired impact as within eight minutes of the final period, Braehead were 3-0 down. Joey Sides got a tremendous second, while Kevin Hart rounded things off.
A frantic brawl broke out in the closing two minutes, but it was a bit of fight from Braehead which came around 24 hours too late.
It leaves a disillusioned Clan support wondering where there side will go next, while the Stars fans can now look forward to a weekend in Nottingham.
“It sound phenomenal to hear we are in the finals. I’m so proud of our group. They have come together and bonded so well in the last few months when we were down and out,” said Marc LeFebvre, the Dundee head coach. “We found something to rally round and I couldn’t be more proud of these guys.
“I couldn’t have asked for any more. We are the youngest team in the league. We have come up with some great performances down the stretch and this weekend is our best all year.
“To come here and shutout Clan on home ice in a play-off game with their firepower they have, we just stuck to our game plan and executed well.”
Dundee will join the Belfast Giants in the semis after they defeated Fife Flyers, league champions Cardiff Devils who overcame Manchester Storm and Sheffield Steelers who edged out Nottingham Panthers in overtime.
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