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Hertz captain Justin St Denis didn’t say that — Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was the one who coined the term — but he might as well have. Hertz THUMPED the Novotel Spitfires 10-2 in week eight of the SHL season as payback for a 9-3 thumping at the hands of Novotel earlier in the year.
Novotel keeper Gabor Toth went from earning the first shutout of the SHL season a week previously with a stand-out performance to playing, well, can we just say that SHL analysts are still searching for a way to describe it.

It must be noted that Novotel was missing four key players (Corry Day, Ken Kindborn, Matt Johnson and David Boere) but they did have all-star sub Patrick Forstner in the line-up.

No matter, Hertz, missing four players as well. added subs Bass Wilailux and Non Aekkasemnarong, and they just came out flying and didn’t let up. In this game, Hertz had four players who play for the Nakaraj team in the BIHL (Bass, Non, as well as Mangkorn Sukwiboon and Yean Thanakroekkiat— the four also play for the Thai national team). They were fast and Novotel’s aging second line (Jason Bitter, Jouni Heinonen & Scott Murray) just couldn’t keep up.

St. Denis was the Rolling Stone Pizza player of the game for his four-goal and five-point performance. Darius Konotopetz also turned in an outstanding game earning five points as well with three goals and two assists. Andy Brine playing defense added three assists on perfect tape-to-tape passes. Multiple Hertz players had two-point nights.

In the end, Toth, stopped 26 of the 36 shots he faced while Dream Ungkulpattanasuk stopped 20 of the 22 pucks fired his way guarding the Hertz twine.

Game two was ever so close as TRUE trailed AWARE 2-1 with ten minutes to go when AWARE’s ice magicians added two late goals to keep AWARE undefeated at 8-0 and TRUE winless at 0-8. Roman Larin and Harrison Oztemel staked AWARE to a 2-0 first-period lead but Jordan Ashton closed the gap to one early in the second. Winnie Luckanatinakorn put in what looked like a choreographed goal on a rebound from a Phu Suwachirat shot to make it 3-1 and then Juhani Ijas (Winnie’s and Phu’s coach on the Thai national team) put on a piece of stickhandling wizardry to cement the win.

Jason Cotsmire was the Rolling Stone Pizza player-of-the-game; subbing for injured Lance Parker, he played brilliantly turning aside 35 of the 39 shots he faced seeing his first SHL action of the year. Patrick Leduc turned aside 16 of the 17 shots fired his way.

After eight games, Novotel’s Corry Day still leads the SHL’s scoring race with 18 points (10G, 8A); linemate Michael White is in second spot with 15 points (5G, 10A); AWARE’s Harrison Oztemel (8G, 5A) is in third spot with 13 points and his teammates Roman Larin and Juhani Ijas are tied in fourth spot with 10 points each (4 G, 6A) though Roman has played two fewer games.

The final games of the SHL 2018 calendar year will be played this Sunday December 16th with TRUE looking for its first win against Novotel at 8:30pm and Hertz trying to hand AWARE its first defeat of the season at 9:30pm. Admission is free and all games take place at the Rink, 7th floor, Central Grand Rama IX. Games will resume in the New Year on Sunday January 13th.