Giants win sixth straight game

Photo: William Cherry

Belfast Giants came out fast and scored three first-period goals before eventually beating Coventry Blaze 4-1 in front of a crowd of 5,102 fans on Wednesday night at the SSE Arena.

The win was the Giants' sixth in a row. “Every team wants to start well, but we know that the travel to Belfast is different to teams’ normal travel - flying on a gameday, and so on, so it’s important for us to get on them early and make this a hard place to play,” said captain Mark Cooper.

"I think we’re definitely playing great hockey right now. It’s a very tight table at the moment, it’s exciting to be a part of, but we have to not be satisfied and continue to learn and play well."

It was the Giants who opened the scoring on the powerplay through Jordan Kawaguchi. After skating along the goal line, he had options in the middle but decided to go alone and finished excellently, beating Mat Robson at his near post and firing into the roof of the net with 7:56 played.

The Giants doubled their lead, on the powerplay once again, at 12:45. After some neat great build-up play between Scott Conway and JJ Piccinich, the latter then had the opportunity to shoot but unselfishly played the puck across the face of the goal to Mark Cooper to finish into an empty net.

"JJ made a great play there to set me up for a tap-in. I’ve been lucky this year and had quite a few goals," added Cooper "It feels awesome scoring, but the wins are what matters most."

The Giants grabbed a third through Mike Lee to cap off an excellent first period. He received the puck from Grant Mismash, and his shot just snuck through the glove of Mat Robson and across the line at 16:50.

Coventry started the middle period very well, grabbing a goal at 21:30. A two-on-one resulted with the puck being played to Chase Groseck and while his shot was well saved by Tom McCollum, but he couldn't do anything to stop Groseck from tapping in the rebound to get the Blaze back in the game. Both teams both threatened throughout the second period, but neither could grab a goal to leave the Giants with a two-goal lead going into the third.

A minor on each team in the first ten minutes of period three didn't change the scoreline, and with 2:29 to play the Blaze risked everything and pulled Robson, 54 seconds later, Cooper won the puck in his own end and set Bobo Carpenter away to finish on the empty net at 58:15 and settle the game.