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AIHL Weekend Preview: Double Vision

It's a mirror image this weekend, as six out of the eight teams Down Under play double headers, including one of Chowder's two squads.

By pucktistic
Mark Bradford

Double headers.

They're massively familiar in baseball, but not so much in the NHL. Home-and-home series are something we're more familiar with, but the geographical makeup of the AIHL and its limited budget in comparison to the NHL presents some interesting anomalies not necessarily familiar to North American audiences.

One of those is the home double-header against the same team-an experience familiar to AIHL teams, especially when they face the Perth Thunder, who play closer to Jakarta than they do Sydney, and a whole continent away from the rest of the league.

This weekend the Melbourne Mustangs make the long trip across Australia hoping to repeat the success of Chowder's other team, the Newcastle North Stars, who took two wins vs the Perth Thunder to open the season.

The North Stars, meanwhile, face two tricky matches, first vs the Sydney Ice Dogs (who last week snapped their losing streak in fine style vs their cross-city rivals the Bears) away from home before the Canberra Brave at home on the Sunday, who lost to the Mustangs last Sunday for their first loss of the 2016 season.

Elsewhere, the Adelaide Adrenaline make their long-awaited return to the ice after arena problems delayed the start of their season in an away double-header vs the Melbourne Ice, while the Sydney Bears face the Brave on the Saturday and the Ice Dogs in a revenge mission on the Sunday.

Don't forget, you can watch the North Stars on the Sunday live on their Youtube Channel, as well as listen to both Mustangs games via the live audio stream run by Perth Thunder at http://www.aihl.net/thunderlive

This weekend's fixtures in full, along with local-time faceoffs (14 hours ahead of EST):

SATURDAY

Melbourne Mustangs at Perth Thunder (4:30pm)

Adelaide Adrenaline at Melbourne Ice (5pm)

Newcastle North Stars at Sydney Ice Dogs (5pm)

Sydney Bears at Canberra Brave (5:30pm)

SUNDAY

Adelaide Adrenaline at Melbourne Ice (4pm)

Melbourne Mustangs at Perth Thunder (4:30pm)

Sydney Ice Dogs at Sydney Bears  (5pm)

Canberra Brave at Newcastle North Stars (5pm)

AIHL GAME TIME!