Ryan Hughes had 3 goals and Patrick Bajkov had a goal and 4 points on Retro night as the Flames opened a massive lead and gave little back with a 7-1 home win over Glasgow Clan.
First period goals by Hughes and Ryan Tait sent Flames to break holding the 2 goal edge.
About 7 minutes into the middle frame, Hughes secured his 2nd and Bajkov at 30:56 opened a 4-0 lead for the home team. Hughes completed his Hat Trick just 9 seconds after that and Steven McParland piled on another late in the frame with a penalty shot to allow Flames a 6 goal spread through 40 minutes.
An early 3rd period powerplay was converted by Matt Alvaro with his goal 78 seconds after re-start, but Darien Craighead spoiled a perfect night for Taz Burman when he got their only marker in the 45th minute.
Burman made 22 stops on 23 shots against Antti Karjalainen went 23 of 30.
“It was certainly nice to be back on home ice after such a long stretch with a lot of long distance travel in a short space of time,” explained Paul Dixon.
“You can’t put 7 goals down to guys just being so excited to get back in front of our own fans, but certainly that didn’t hurt our interest in putting in a good performance and getting ourselves to a win.”
“It is a very tight playoff race. We need the points to stay ahead of teams who are nipping at our heels and beating Glasgow head to head was the best thing we could do to stave them off.”
“From the goalie out we got a great game from everyone, and we will enjoy the moment before turning our eyes to Sunday at Sheffield where we would like to redeem ourselves of the Cup result there not long ago.”
