Posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2012 at 4:19 pm
The Stena Line Belfast Giants Continental Cup campaign finished off in style with a convincing 4-0 victory over the Romanian champions HSC Csikszereda. After yesterdays defeat to the host team Landshut Cannibals it was vital that the Giants won this game to have any chance of qualification and now await the result of tonights game between Landshut and Rujiters Eaters Geleen to find out if they progress to the next round.
The Giants got on the board at 1:33 of the first period as defenceman Sam Roberts fired a snapshot from the top of the circles past the Romanian netminder on a feed from David Phillips.
Csikszereda then replied with some scoring chances of their own but couldn’t find a way past Giants ‘player of the game’ Stephen Murphy who was in fine form. At the opposite end of the ice the Csikszereda netminder was as equally impressive turning away wave after wave of Giants offence.
Surprisingly just after the mid way point in the game it was the same netminder that was skating to the bench as he was replaced at 33:43 to give their equally able backup some time in net.
The change was quickly capitalised on by the Giants as they struck again at 34:38. With Csikszereda on the powerplay the netminder came our to clear the puck around the glass and hit Noah Clarke on the helmet and rebounded into the slot leaving Greg Stewart and easy scoring opportunity to double the Giants advantage.
Stewart and Clarke were once again involved in the Giants next goal setting up Craig Peacock to make it 3-0 at 36:16 leaving the Giants with a comfortable lead going into the second intermission.
In the final 20 minutes the Giants continued to generate offence but it took until the final 21 seconds before they would get on the board again as Andrew Fournier calmly rounded the netminder to slide the puck into an empty cage to the delight on the Giants fans in that end of the rink, rounding off the scoring at 4-0.
