Texas Falls 4-2 in Preseason Opener in San Antonio

Texas dropped its preseason opener against the San Antonio Rampage in the Alamo City tonight by a 4-2 mark. The game was intended to give tryouts and rookies an opportunity to show their stuff. As such, most of the expected opening night roster was scratched.



Philippe Desrosiers and Landon Bow, who are battling for the backup role behind Mike McKenna, split the time in net evenly this evening. The Stars outshot San Antonio 40-16, and each goalie allowed two goals on 8 shots.



Texas was 1-for-9 on the power play, certainly a missed opportunity, and allowed two power play goals of their own on six chances.



The Rampage jumped out to an early lead. Texas evened the score early in the second with an even strength tally from Mark McNeill but then found themselves down 4-1 in the third. They would tack on another on the power play form Cole Ully late in the third but come no closer than that.



Coach Laxdal said this morning that he was looking for guys with high compete levels to make an impression. After having issues playing a full 60 last season at times, he wants players who can absolutely provide that full measure of effort from start to finish. It's tough to judge tonight's game based on the box score. However, the players who fill in tomorrow for the missing (but ultimately expected) Remi Elie, Jason Dickinson and Roope Hintz will provide a good window into who broke through in tonight's game.



Tonight's lines:

Dries-McNeill-Gurianov

Ully-French-Rallo

Moroz-Markison-Laberge

Fyten-Dahl-Thompson



Bayreuther-Hanna

Sweetman-Corbett

Hansson-Harstad



Desrosiers

Bow