Blaze stay unbeaten in league with late win

Photo: William Cherry

Coventry Blaze let a lead go with under four minutes remaining, but rallied to score the game winner inside the final 90 seconds, to beat Belfast Giants in front of 6,826 fans at the SSE Arena. The win keeps the Blaze's record in tact as the only unbeaten team in league play this season.

"I think we were really resilient tonight. We got off to a pretty tough start and Belfast kind of had us on our heels and they're a really really good team but we didn't roll over and we kept fighting'" said Nick Seitz, who scored the game-winner. "At a lot of different points I thought we could've quit, but we didn't, so it was just a really resilient game from our group."

It was an electric start from the Giants, who took the lead at 1:38 through Pierre Morin. Scott Conway found Mike Lee, whose shot was saved by Mat Robson. However, the Blaze goalie couldn't do anything to stop Pierre Morin from scoring the rebound to give the Giants the lead.

The Giants doubled their lead as some great play between Grant Mismash and Mark Cooper saw the puck fall to Mismash again, and although shot was well saved by Robson, the rebound was snaffled up by Ben Lake,whose goal stood after an unsuccessful Coach’s Challenge by the Blaze, and after a lengthy pause as Robson appeared to pull up with an injury.

Coventry were able to pull a goal back through Chase Groseck before the end of the period. The puck was loose outside the crease, and it was Groseck who reacted quickest to bring the visitors back to within a goal.

In period two, it was the Giants who started quickly again grabbing a third through Scott Conway. It was an unassisted beauty from Conway, who went past one defender and scored to give the Giants a two-goal lead at 22:12.

The Blaze were again able to pull a goal back, this time at 30:48, to cut the Giants’ lead to one. Nick Seitz fed the puck beautifully to Alessio Luciani, who finished well.

An equaliser then came for the Blaze on power play at 36:21. Gresock excellently pulled the play back to Zach Heintz, who sniped the puck past Tom McCollum to level the game at three each.

7:42 into the third, the comeback was complete. Brandon Alderson was left in too much space on the powerplay and picked his spot past Tom McCollum to put the Blaze ahead. That was a lead that the visitors held until 56:04. With David Clements in the box for Slashing, a wonderful pass from Elijiah Barriga found Scott Conway for an excellent one-time finish to tie the game. 

McCollum came up with a huge save on his back to keep the game level, but minutes later the Blaze were back in front. McCollum stopped the initial shot, but Nick Seitz was on hand to put home the rebound and put Coventry back ahead with 1:24 to play.

"I was just really excited honestly, it was a bit of a roller coaster in those last five minutes!" said Seitz of his goal. "Belfast get another goal but then we score again, I'm just really excited for our team to get that win because that's a really big win for us.

The Giants went on the search for an equaliser and looked to have got one - but for an incredible Mat Robson save with 15 seconds left on the clock. Alessio Luciani slotted into the empty net from captain Kim Tallberg's pass to round off a sensational road win for the Blaze.

The Blaze remain the only undefeated team in league play this season. "I think we're kinda breaking through our limits right now and the goal is to be top of the league. It's obviously really early but I think we've started to set that standard and if we can keep playing the way we've been playing, I think that's a reasonable goal that we can go after this year" added Seitz.