Stingrays gain revenge over Steelers

Sylvain Cloutier's team have endured a number of long and painful coach rides home this season but are fast turning Hull Arena into an unpleasant venue for visitors as they ran out worthy winners over their Yorkshire rivals.

Hot-shot Jereme Tendler was the hat-trick hero for Hull, as the home side recovered from an early two-goal deficit in front of around 900 fans.

Joey Talbot and Tom Squires had fired Steelers two ahead in the first five minutes, understandably leaving some Stingrays' fans to fear a repeat of the 12-0 Cardiff humiliation from last weekend when Hull had also conceded two early goals.

But a well-worked move saw Matti Uusivirta make it a one-goal game at 10.52 before Konstantin Kalmikov poked the puck through Ervin Mustukovs legs to draw the home side level just over two minutes later.

That's how it stayed until early in the second when Tendler fed off Cloutier and Kurtis Dulle to slot home his first of the night.

Ryan Lake then tipped in a Craig Mitchell shot from the point at 36.53 before things got worse for an increasingly disjointed Steelers when Dulle fired home left-handed to make it 5-2 at 38.03, prompting a time-out call by the visitors.

The visitors woes continued shortly before the end of the second when Rob Dowd was handed a 2+10 misconduct penalty for checking to the head.

With Steelers' Derek Campbell ejected for spearing at 49.47, the first of Hull's powerplay goals arrived shortly after the midway point in the third when Tendler pounced on a Jason Silverthorn pull-back to fire past Mustukovs, who was then replaced by Brandon Stones.

The replacement goalie's first action was to pick the puck out of the net when Tendler completed his hat-trick on the powerplay at 51.46, prompting a 10-minute misconduct penalty for Steelers' Rob Globke who was already in the box for a roughing call.

Stingrays will hope to avoid their usual knack of following a positive result with a heavy defeat when they travel to Nottingham Panthers on Sunday (4pm).

Steelers will regroup at Sheffield Arena where they will take on the Braehead Clan (5pm).