On the road at Fife, Flames scored early to have a 2 goal lead 10 minutes in then doubled it shortly into the 3rd before a Flyers rally cut the deficit to a single, but a late empty netter guaranteed a 5-3 win over the Flyers.
93 seconds into the contest, Daniel Tedesco had Flames in front and a Bradley Lalonde goal just before the period was halfway through had the visitors up by a pair, and that scoreline remained unchanged into the middle frame.
Brett Ferguson on a powerplay at 31:35 had Flames in command, ahead by 3 through 40 minutes.
Early in the 3rd, Peter Crinella extended Flames to a 4 goal spread, but Flyers began the recovery on an ensuing powerplay thanks to Janne Kivilahti at 43:18 then cut their deficit to a pair through Zach Phillips just over 11 minutes from time. On another powerplay, Flyers got within a goal when Shawn Cameron connected at 55:14, but Sam Marklund relieved the pressure and sealed the win when he netted into an empty cage 37 seconds from close.
Taz Burman recorded the win for the road side with 23 saves while Shane Owen gets tagged with the loss from a 32 stop evening.
“We were certainly happy with everything we had done to put ourselves into a solid lead in control of the game by early in the 3rd,” began Paul Dixon, “but we let ourselves down a bit by ending up under such pressure at the end and in danger of letting Fife all the way back in.”
“There is always a natural tendency when your mind thinks you have everything wrapped up to end up more on the back foot, but in future we need to find a way to get around that.”
“It’s important that we learn something from this, namely that every team in the league is too good to have any stretch of let up, and Fife really punished us and nearly stole the points back.”
“At the end of the day a road win at Fife is a great success, and now we will roll back to Guildford and try our best to be ready for the re-match on Sunday night.”
