Giants Hold Off Stingrays With 5-3 Win

Posted on Friday, September 9th, 2011 at 10:48 pm

The Stena Line Belfast Giants recorded their first win of the Elite League season with a convincing 5-3 win over the Hull Stingrays. The Stingrays who up to this point were undefeated went behind at the 3:00 minute mark of the 1st period when Brock McBride bundled the puck past Christian Boucher following a goalmouth scramble.

It wasn’t long however before the visitors got back on level terms with Dominic Osman netting on the powerplay at 5:44. The Stingrays forward fired home a quick snap shot from between the hash marks off a behind the net feed from Sam McCluskey beating Murphy on his glove side to make it 1-1.

2 Giants powerplay opportunities passed with a number of scoring chances but no goals before on the 3rd attempt Robert Dowd smashed home a one time snap shot from a tight angle on a feed from Tom Dignard to restore the Giants lead going into the intermission.

As an end to end second period started Craig Peacock netted the Giants 3rd goal with Benoit Doucet and Brock McBride picking up the assists at 21:52. For the most part the second period was quite open with both teams creating a number of scoring chances and putting the opposition netminder to the test.

The Giants penalty killers were called into action at the midway point in the period with James Hutchinson sitting a 2-minute hooking penalty, however the Giants held firm and shut the Stingrays out.

At 34:11 Jeff Mason made it 4—1 with a superb solo effort breaking down the right wing boards before cutting to the middle and snapping a wrister top shelf high over Boucher’s glove side.

As the 3rd period started the game was almost over as a contest with Benoit Doucet making it 5-1 just 2 minutes after the re-start, but the Stingrays were not finished yet and countered with late surge in the final 20 minutes.

Jereme Tendler fired past Murphy to make it 5-2 before Josh Mizerek added another for the Stingrays to make it 5-3 but that would be the end of the scoring and the Giants were able to see the remaining time out holding on to their 2 goals cushion.

As this was the only game being played tonight the win puts the Giants at the top of the Elite League standings overnight, a spot they will be wanting to maintain as the team travel to Cardiff tomorrow to take on the devils.