After Flames levelled late in the first, the Cardiff Devils scored 4 unanswered the rest of the way to end 2024 with a 5-1 defeat of the visitors from Spectrum.
Kohen Olischefski opened the scoring for Devils at 7:10. A Matt Alvaro reply in the 15th minute had the teams level at a goal each through the 1st, but that would be the last of the offence for the visiting club.
65 seconds into the middle set, Cole Sanford put the home team in front. Brett Perlini made it 3-1 on the powerplay a couple of minutes later and a Joey Martin powerplay strike around the midway point had Devils enjoying a 3 goal cushion to start the 3rd.
Just over 2 minutes from close, Devils bagged their last off the stick of Josh MacDonald to complete the evening.
Eamon McAdam made 47 saves on 52 shots while Mac Carruth for Devils turned away all but one of 20 shots in his direction.
“Not how we planned on closing 2024 but hopefully we can turn it around to open 2025 tomorrow afternoon,” said Paul Dixon.
“It was the 2nd period where we lost the evening. They had a couple of powerplay goals and they generated a lot of high quality chances to really push us onto the back foot, and we couldn’t recover from there.”
“Wednesday is a new day, an entirely new year in fact, and we have to wash this one off and start looking at what we can do to earn a result in less than 24 hours.”
