Elite League: Leaders Belfast Giants back to winning ways with 4-1 win over Nottingham Panthers
- Published
Belfast's victory keeps them four points ahead of Sheffield Steelers, who hammered Cardiff Devils 6-2
The Belfast Giants bounced back to secure a 4-1 win in the second part of their weekend doubleheader against the Nottingham Panthers.
Ciaran Long, Scott Conway, Darcy Murphy and David Goodwin all scored for the Elite League leaders.
Coupled with Sheffield's 6-2 win over Cardiff, the gap at the top of the standings between the Giants and Steelers remains four points.
The English side do have two games in hand on the leaders.
The Giants have seven games left starting with Tuesday's visit to Glasgow.
Nottingham threatened to continue where they had left off in Friday's 4-2 win as they forced Tyler Beskorowany into three huge saves in the opening 57 seconds of the game as the home team looked like they hadn't shrugged off the disappointment of that defeat.
Slowly however the Giants began to create chances and took two of them to skate into a 2-0 lead after just over six minutes of action.
Darcy Murphy's goal put Belfast 3-1 up
An odd man rush was perfectly executed by Murphy and Long and his slap shot from the right circle beat Panthers goalie Kevin Carr.
Super individual skills from Conway and JJ Piccinich created space for Conway to fire home the second goal although Carr got plenty of the puck but not enough to stop it dropping into the net.
Frustratingly from a Giants point of view the third goal didn't arrive, rather like 24 hours earlier, and on a powerplay the Panthers would get on the board through Sean Richards as he beat Beskorowany who was without his stick that he'd dropped earlier in the play.
The second period was a wide open end-to-end game, the type coaches hate and the next goal was likely to be crucial.
It went the Giants way as Mark Cooper's one timer missed the net but rebounded of the back boards, came out the other side and with Carr out of position Murphy was on hand to score.
The final period became attritional, there were chances for both sides but the netminders did their job to insure no more goals and the Giants held on to that two goal lead.
That was until a powerplay for the Giants with seven minutes remaining that they made count when Goodwin redirected the pass from Piccinich past Carr.
It was enough to secure two more vital points in the championship chase, one that looks like going down to the final weekend of the season.