On the road at Sheffield Steelers Flames put away a table point with a regulation tie, but with just 9 seconds in overtime Veeti Vainio forced the 2nd point to the home ledger sending Flames away on the back of a 2-1 defeat.
Matthew Greenfield in Sheffield’s net and Jake Kupsky for Flames put in a perfect opening frame each and it looked like they would do it again for the period that followed, but a Dan Catenacci goal 79 seconds from break had the visitors in front through 40 minutes.
A little under 11 minutes into the 3rd, Steelers spoiled Kupsky’s shutout bid thanks to a Samuel Tremblay strike. Shortly thereafter, Zack Hoffman received and extra pair of minutes from a fight with Robert Dowd giving Steelers powerplay a chance to move in front, but Flames saw the time out to keep it level down the final stretch where the remaining time ticked off to set the stage for 3 on 3 overtime and the Vainio decider at 64:51.
“After Sheffield had some pretty easy wins over us in their building early in the season, we were pleased to have been a lot stiffer competition in this one,” said Paul Dixon.
“We got an excellent performance from Jake at the back and for the most part we were pretty solid as a defensive group. We probably didn’t pressure them as much as we might like to see over the course of an evening, but it was that kind of game, and it is frustrating that we were unable to get out of there with the win on a night when we had a lead with 11 or 12 minutes left.”
“You can’t play with the same structure in overtime simply because you don’t have the manpower, and they put together a very good game ending chance.”
“We have to take the point and get home Sunday where hopefully we can be solid all over the ice and generate a bit more offence to try and get a win over Dundee.”
