An early Flames goal brought a sold out Spectrum crowd to their feet, but that was the highlight of the evening for Flames supporters as Giants replied with 6 unanswered the rest of the way to deliver a stunning 6-1 defeat of the home team to leapfrog Surrey’s side in taking over the league lead.
Ryan Tait got Flames started a little under 4 minutes into the contest, but a pair of Giants replies in the back half of the frame by Ciaran Long at 13:07 and Gabe Bast on the powerplay 11 seconds from break had the visitors enjoying a 2-1 margin.
Early in the 2nd, the evening got away from Spectrum’s men starting at 25:27 when Scott Conway netted and exactly 2 minutes later Grant Cooper pushed the visitors ahead by 3. They made it a 5-1 count on the powerplay through Lewis Hook just over halfway which kicked off some extracurriculars that saw Flames captain Brett Ferguson and Ben Lake each accept fighting majors and game misconducts. 55 seconds after that, Giants bagged the final marker and pushed further ahead to 6-1 with Bast’s 2nd and more late period activity ended with a roughing major and game ejection to Sam Marklund, while Kyle Locke took a seat for 7 minutes thanks to a Fighting major and instigating penalty. On behalf of the visitors, Sam Ruopp was assigned 5 for fighting for the same encounter and that ended the significant scoresheet entries as the evening eventually closed with Giants holding the league’s top spot.
“We are obviously a bit stunned and exceptionally disappointed with the way things went tonight considering the opportunity that a head to head like this presents at this time of year and in this situation,” admitted Paul Dixon.
“It’s hard to explain how things went sideways like that in the 2nd period after we thought we had a pretty good start to the evening, but it did and we are going to have to find a way to dust ourselves off and not lose sight of the fact that it is just one game and we are still in a good spot with a lot of hockey left.”
“Obviously we are going to have to be a lot better the next time out, but feeling sorry for ourselves and dwelling on this is not going to help so we have to start to look forward, stay positive and get right back at it with a big weekend ahead at Cardiff before getting back here against Coventry.”
