The Adelaide Adrenaline face the Melbourne Mustangs on the road

Adelaide will be looking to build on the positive improvements they’ve made from the first half of the season.

During the bye week, the Adrenaline focused on staying prepared physically. Head Coach Jade Galbraith made sure that the team stayed healthy as they gear up to face Melbourne, “I mostly just want to focus on not getting injuries. Getting everybody healthy… As a coach you want to be healthy going in,” he said.

The Adrenaline secured back-to-back wins in their last pair of games, a home double-header against the Central Coast Rhinos. The two weekend's before that saw the SA outfit split weekends with both the Perth Thunder and Canberra Brave, respectively. 

The recent scoring output from Adelaide has been instrumental in the upturn of results, winning 7-2 and 4-1 against the Rhinos, 7-4 against the Thunder and 3-2 against the Brave, a huge contrast to earlier in the season.

Adelaide has been continuing to work on their defensive strategy and systems according to Coach Jade, “You always want to work on your defensive zone. You always want to work on your systems,” but he also highlighted the improvement in on-ice positioning, “Definitely our defensive zone and neutral zone transition is better – we have good spacing.”

Adelaide are well within the fight for a playoff spot, just two points behind Canberra who are sixth on the ladder.

Melbourne’s roster boasts players who have played at the highest level of hockey, with former NHL players Scott Timmins and Ty Wishart bolstering their squad. Recently there has been a changeover of imports, with Zach Phillips out of the lineup and Nathan Dunkley joining the squad with ECHL experience under his belt. A big switch up has been the exclusion of Goaltender Anthony Kimlin, due to injury, with Bryan Mackenzie and Thomas Papas splitting duties in-between the pipes. Papas had a notable victory, saving 34 shots against Perth in a 4-3 win, an incredible performance from the then 16-year-old.

Going into the O'Brien Icehouse is not an easy task, but Adelaide will be looking to take it to the Mustangs who have recently had a dip in form. Early in the season, the Mustangs were winning games with impressive scorelines, beating Central Coast 10-1 and 6-1, putting eight past the Northstars in an 8-3 win and shelling the Brave 10-2. June has been a tricky month for the Melbourne side, though. With just one win in a 4-3 game against the Thunder this month, the Mustangs have been outscored 37-23, including 3-goal losses to Newcastle and the Rhinos -  teams they were comfortably beating earlier this season.

“If we have the same effort we had the last couple weekends, we should be able to play the games to where we want and get some good results,” coach Jade said.

The Adrenaline will be looking to continue their recent run of form, whilst capitalising on the Mustangs' dip, it's set to be a challenging weekend but one that is massively important for the league standings.