GRAND CHUTE - Already with an impressive 3-0 showing over their holiday break, the Fox Cities Stars (12-1) were back in action Saturday, looking to close out what could be a perfect break. Standing in their way of that was a South Central Navigators (2-7) that was not only fired up for this game, but was looking to pull off one of the bigger upsets of the season at the Champions Center.

Despite the Navigators matching the Stars' tempo throughout the first period of play, their inability to generate much of an offensive threat came back to bite them as South Central was held to just 13 shots in the game. Compare that to the 45 that Fox Cities put on frame, and you got a sense of how things would go as the Stars completed a 4-0 holiday break with another dominating 8-0 victory.

Fast starts were the theme of the night for the Stars, as it didn’t take them very long to open the scoring, needing just over a minute to put one past Bryson Callaway, as the Quinn Murphy goal gave the Stars a 1-0 lead. Callaway would end up stopping 37 shots in the game, but this was a lead that Fox Cities never relinquished, leading the game start to finish. Despite having very few scoring opportunities against Easton Thoresen, South Central had an opportunity to even things up just over a minute later as what looked to be a game-tying goal was waved off as the Navigators bumped into Thoresen prior to the puck crossing the line, resulting in the goal coming off the morings.

That was as close as South Central would come to scoring again until late in the game, as Kellan Murphy doubled the lead just past the four-minute mark in the first period. That 2-0 score would hold until the final minutes when Blayke Adamovich crashed the goal on a would-be shot attempt, resulting in a tip-in goal that had Fox Cities in front 3-0 after just one period of play. Even with an already sizable lead in hand, the Stars refused to let off the gas as another fast goal less than four minutes into the second extended the Stars' lead to 4-0 with Andrew Ostermann knocking home a power-play goal.

Ostermann had a period to remember as he was the Stars' offense throughout the second period, adding his second goal of the period just under the 12-minute mark to push the lead to 5-0, which is where things would stand after two periods of play. He wasn’t done there as the Stars opened the third about as flawlessly as you can, picking up their sixth goal of the game just nine seconds in to push their lead to 6-0.

Once again, it was Ostermann coming away with the goal as he completed his Hat Trick by tallying the third consecutive goal of the contest for Fox Cities as they were in firm command at this point. Even with Xander Herron and Parker Janssen tallying two more goals over the next five minutes to make this an 8-0 Stars lead. The Navigators refused to back down, putting up six of their 13 shots on goal in that period.

Not only that, but several of those shots led to great scoring chances only to have Thoresen come away with key stops down the stretch to preserve the shutout as the Stars take care of business once again, 8-0. Fox Cities will now get a week off before their next game, when they hit the road to take on Wisconsin Rapids next Saturday.