Giants, Panthers & Steelers celebrate wins

Pre-season starts well for three teams

Four Elite League teams were in action on Saturday night in warm-up games for the new season.

Belfast Giants 3-1 Mora IK
(1-1, 1-0, 1-0)

A debut goal for Ben Lake got Belfast rolling against Swedish Allsvenskan side Mora IK at the SSE Arena.

His opener just after seven minutes was then cancelled out by Niki Petti shortly before the end of the opening period, but by 26:31 the Giants were back ahead as Patrick Mullen scored with 26:31 played. Kevin Raine struck 1:25 into the final period to give the Giants a solid win in their first game together for the new-look team.

Goals:
Belfast: 07:04 PP Lake, 26:31 Mullen (Farnham, Hook), 41:25 Raine (Wronka, Lake)
Mora: 15:32 Petti (Schagerberg)
PIM: 10-8
SoG: 22-26

Nottingham Panthers 3-2 Cardiff Devils
(0-0, 2-1, 1-1)

Tim Wallace’s first game in charge of his new-look Nottingham Panthers side saw them run out winners by the odd goal in five against Cardiff.

It took 33:44 of the game to be played before Jon Rheault opened the scoring, however Cardiff needed only 36 seconds to strike back as Stephen Dixon tipped Sean Bentivogio’s shot past Kevin Carr. A rocket Adam Deutsch shot at 36:59 gave Tom Murdy in the Devils net no chance to put the Panthers back ahead before the period was out.

Charles Linget levelled the game 4:15 into the final period, but just as it looked like overtime was looming Mark Matheson set Rheault free behind the Devils’ back line, and he beat Murdy with a nice move to steal the win with 17 seconds left.

Goals:
Nottingham: 33:34 Rheault (Loiseau), 36:59 PP Deutsch (Quist), 59:43 Rheault (Matheson)
Cardiff: 34:31 Dixon (Bentivoglio, Fournier), 44:15 Linglet (McNamee, McMonagle)
PIM: 2-4
SoG: 26-16

Sheffield Steelers 7-4 HK Poprad
(0-2, 5-1, 2-1)

A bizarre game at ice Sheffield saw the Steelers come from three down to beat Slovaks HK Poprad. The visitors led by two after the opening period, and then went three ahead 25:45 into the game thanks to Andreas Štrauch.

Sheffield’s fightback started at 27:41 thanks to Brendan Connolly, and when Tanner Eberle and Anthony DeLuca struck 28 seconds apart the hosts were level by 29:45.

Goals from Marc-Olivier Vallerand and Connolly again followed to put the Steelers 5-3 ahead after 40 minutes, while Nikolai Lemtyugov and Jonas Liwing struck either side of Petr Kundrik’s goal in the third to seal a 7-4 win.

Goals:
Sheffield: 27:41 PP Connolly (Dowd), 29:13 PP Eberle (Meland, Davies), 29:45 DeLuca (Johnson), 35:08 Vallerand (Dowd), 39:11 PP Connolly (Vallerand, Brocklehurst), 52:57 Lemtyugov (DeLuca), 58:47 Liwing (DeLuca)
Poprad: 03:55 Mlynarovič (Svitana), 07:04 PP Leclerc (Brejčák, Paukovček), 25:45 PP Štrauch (Brejčák), 57:59 Kundrik
PIM: 66-43
SoG: 35-67