Giants snatch late road win

Photo: John Uwins

Two goals in the final 58 seconds tole Belfast Giants the two points against Guildford Flames at a sold-out Spectrum in Surrey.

"To play a solid 60 minutes was the focus today. We've been playing well but just not getting the results of late, so it was nice to see one through," said game-winner Josh Roach. "I think a couple of lucky bounces was probably the difference in the end. We hit a couple of posts, both goalies played well, and I think both teams actually played a good game."

Belfast were first to light the lamp just before the four minute mark of the first period. Bo Hanson picked up the puck in the neutral zone, worked it over to Ben Lake who made a nice move to get past two defence man and then slot it past the blocker side of Eamon McAdam with 3:49 played.

Almost instantly after McAdam was back under pressure with a few good chances for Belfast to increase their lead. Guildford's best chance in the period was a chance from Jack Jacome who drove hard at the net but Tom McColumn was quick to stop him from getting the rebound. The Giants led by one through 20 minutes.

The Flames upped the intensity in period two and were rewarded.  Ethan Strang slide the puck over to Josh Waller who was able to slip the puck between the pads of McCollum to tie it at 27:46. The Giants saw a shot come back off McAdam's post as they almost went ahead, but the scores were tied heading into the third. 

"Making sure we came out hard against Belfast was important," explained Flames' Charlie Curti. "They'd lost a few coming into this one but they're really structured and you can't under-estimate them. "We played a good game, just didn't get what we deserved in the end."

An early kill by the Giants came after they thought they'd scored - Scott Conway batted the puck into the net, but play was whistled down for an interference minor on JJ Piccinich in the build-up. Belfast then called a timeout at 48:28 as they were about to go on the powerplay. The Flames survived two minors as the clock ticked down, but then themselves hit a post to deny them going ahead. On the very next play, Piccinich saw a shot come back off the crossbar.

With the game seemingly heading to overtime, Josh Roach rocketed a shot off a Conway faceoff win past McAdam to put the Giants back ahead with 58 seconds to play. On the resulting faceoff, loose play by the Flames in their own end allowed Jordan Kawaguchi to make it 3-1 just nine seconds later. Brett Ferguson added a consolation for the Flames on the buzzer, but it was a win for the Giants in a game which 60 seconds before had looked like it might take overtime to decide.

"It was exciting to see that one go in!" added Roach. "We'd talked about a faceoff play and it worked out as good as we'd planned. I made a good shot there, and then it was great to see the Kawaguchi goal go in on the next shift to give us some breathing room."

Roach concluded: "I think it was a good game by both teams, we're proud of our effort. We controlled parts of that game against s really good team. Just towards the end they had a nice shot, and that was the difference."