Giants edge out Storm in shootout

Photo: William Cherry

Belfast Giants secured a four-point weekend with a shootout victory over Manchester Storm in front of 6,237 fans at the SEE Arena.

Belfast were ahead early off a mistake by the Storm in their own end. A bad giveaway from Callum Fryer as the Storm looked to break out allowed Quinn Preston to take the puck and neatly find Daniel Tedesco at the far post of Evan Weninger's net to open the scoring. Kohei Sato came close to doubling the lead soon after, while Zach Sullivan came to Storm's rescue clearing a trickling puck off Weninger's line to keep the game at 1-0 after the opening 20 minutes.

Weninger pulled off a contender for save of the season early in period two, spinning his glove out behind his back and throwing a looping puck back out off the goal line as it floated towards the back of his net. Despite Storm being put under some good Giants pressure over the second period, the visitors forced a tying goal with 2:04 left in the period when Tyler Hinam followed up a rebound from a Matt Murphy shot to beat Tyler Beskorowany.

Andreas Heier's smart pass found Matt Murphy at the far post to finish and put Storm ahead 3:o6 into period three, but the game was tied less than two minutes later - Ara Nazarian batted the bouncing puck in front of Weninger to level the scores.

The teams couldn't be separated in either the rest of regulation or the bonus five minutes of overtime, and instead the extra point was decided in a shootout. Matt McLeod scored what turned out to be the winner in round four after Will Merchant had tied Ben Lake's opener, but neither Mitchell Martan nor Loren Ulett could find a way past Beskorowant as the Giants took the win.