Thunder Healthy, Confident Heading in to Home Weekend

The Perth Thunder are feeling healthy and confident as they ready themselves for a series at home against the Sydney Bears.

With Captain Jamie Woodman returning from injury, and the rest of his team mates coming off a bye week, Coach Dave Ruck said the squad was looking fresh and eager to get the weekends play under way.

“We had a bit of easy week last week,” Ruck said. “We stepped it up this week and we’ve got a couple of guys coming back into the line-up so we should have some fresh legs ready to go on Saturday.”

Before their week off the team was in Sydney, where they split a series against both the Ice Dogs and the Bears.

The game on Sunday against the Bears was a close affair that saw the Sydney side take a close win that went to the shootout to give the Thunder its first loss of the season.

The Sydney team outshot the Thunder during Sunday’s game, however coach Ruck felt the squad had addressed some of the issues they saw the previous match against the Bears.

“I felt like our shot selection during that game in Sydney wasn’t the best.” Ruck said. “We didn’t execute our shots on goal as well as we could have.”

“But that was one of the things we wanted to focus on this week, just in order to generate more scoring chances when we get ourselves set up in the offensive zone.”

With the team only one point behind the leagues leading two teams in the Brave and Ice, a solid performance this weekend will see them try and take the league’s top spot as they take on the Bears again at home.

However Ruck noted the team was just trying to put one win in front of the other at this point.

“We’re just taking every game one at a time,” Ruck said. “Obviously we want to go for the three points every game. So we’re just trying to come out fast on Saturday and go from there.”

The teams will battle it out at 4:30pm Saturday and Sunday at Perth Ice Arena. You can buy tickets here