Dave Spina is currently SaiPa Lappeenranta's Cramo Top Scorer with three goals and five points in four games. Two of those goals came in Saturday's victory over ERC Ingolstadt, which avenged an earlier loss.
by Kalle Mantere
LAPPEENRANTA - On Game Day 2, SaiPa Lappeenranta went into Ingolstadt and beat the home side 51-29 in shots on goal, yet fell by a score of 4-1, thanks to a 50-save performance in goal by Timo Pielmeier. No player in the game had more than winger Dave Spina, who fired 13 pucks at Palmeier but couldn't beat him. On Game Day 4 the two teams met again in Lappeenranta, and both Spina and SaiPa were a lot more efficient with their shots. Facing Pielmeier again, they scored on five of 24 shots, with Spina's only two shots the entire game both finding the back of the net.
However, despite the obvious shots advantage his team held in the first meeting, Spina didn't think his team deserved to win.
"Ingolstadt had just lost their previous game (5-1 at Vitkovice on Game Day 1) and they came in hungry against us and we just couldn't match their energy level," Spina said about the game back on 23 August. "We took some penalties and couldn't get up to our usual pace.
"Tonight we played just simple and strong, won the battles against them," he said immediately after the 6 September contest. "This was a completely different game compared to our game in Ingolstadt. Even though they got a goal that we shouldn't let them have, we played so much better because we got the necessary goals."
It seems that when SaiPa's needed goals so far, it's Spina that they turn to. In four games he leads the team with five points, tied with linemate David McIntyre. Because Spina has more goals, he's the one who wore the Cramo Top Scorer jersey on Saturday and he will retain it for SaiPa's next game against EV Zug on 23 September.
So far the game in Ingolstadt is the only one in which Spina and McIntyre were unable to get on the scoresheet. But why?
"Sometimes the rink size makes a difference," the 31-year-old American said of the narrower Ingolstadt rink, when asked about it. While most American rinks also use narrow ice, Spina excelled in college hockey on Boston College's wider rink. After six years split between the AHL and ECHL, he is now entering his fourth season playing in Europe, where most rinks use the maximum width of 30 metres.
However, he doesn't want to use that as a cop-out. "We just came out in Germany at such a low level. To me it doesn't matter what size the rink is. When we come out at our top level, we are really hard to play against. It's easy to blame it on equipment, feeling good or feeling bad, but at the end of the day we have to play through it. It's always nice to play at home though."
This past weekend was a good one for SaiPa on home ice, where they took five of six possible points, including the win over Ingolstadt and a 4-3 shootout victory over Vitkovice Ostrava on Thursday. They currently have eight points, which is one less than Group H leader Zug, which means the team's Game Day 5 match-up on Lappeenranta ice is a big one. But the veteran Spina doesn't want to get carried away with building it up.
"I think when you get to this level, playing as a professional, you approach every game the same. We as a team are going to approach the next game in the CHL like any other game. That's all you can do. Just try to do your best every night and see where it gets you."