The Dragons got their league one hockey season underway on Sunday night at the Den with a stark reality warning going down 8-1 to Billingham Stars. After winning league and cup double last year in Division two this year it is going to be a lot tougher to keep up that winning form.
It is early days and it was only the first game that the full squad had played together and there is a long way to go in the season.
The first period was pretty much nip and tuck with both sides playing some nice hockey and the Dragons were competing well with the Stars and could have taken an early lead but were denied by the post, the first period ended level with both teams failing to get on the score sheet.
The second period was a completely different story, Billingham came out flying and caught the Dragons napping and within the space of five minutes they had scored four goals and turned the game on its head, the home team were shell shocked and called a time out to try and stop the rot but the damage was already done. Scott Mckenzie manged to pull a goal back for the Dragons to give them a little glimmer of hope but it was too little too late as Billingham went on to score again minutes later the second period end 5-1 to Billingham and McKenzie’s men had a mountain to climb if they wanted to take anything from this game.
In the third period the Dragons seemed to rally a bit and were getting shots on the stars net but the keeper was in good form and nothing was getting past him. With the Dragons chasing the game and getting forward big gaps were appearing at the back and Billingham exploited this and scored three unanswered goals to make the final score 8-1 to Billingham.
After the game coach Scot Mckenzie said “It was a tough game Billingham are a well drilled team we gave them a game in the first period and there wasn’t much between us and I was really happy the way we were playing, we fell asleep at the start of the 
second period and that’s when all the damage was done, after that we just lost our game plan and we never really got back in the game but there are lots of positives we can take from it ,we will work on it in training and I am very happy with the lads and looking forward to the next game”.
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