A Flames powerplay jump started the Flames scoring, and Logan Fredericks finished the night with a couple of goals as the Flames picked up a 5-2 Cup win over the visiting Coventry Blaze.
A good opening set for the home team had them in a 2 goal lead after 20 minutes thanks to a 5 on 3 powerplay goal by Ben O’Connor at 12:50 and a Fredericks follow up at 15:05.
It took just 72 seconds for Coventry to erase one of those in the middle set when Kobe Roth bagged their starter that survived a long video review, but Bryan Lemos re-stored the 2 goal lead before the period was halfway through. 13 seconds into a powerplay, with 9 minutes remaining in the frame, Blaze cut the deficit back to a single on the strength of an Ian McNulty strike, but Spectrum’s men once again put the multi goal margin on the board by break time with Frederick’s 2nd of the contest at 38:55.
Exactly 60 seconds after re-start the lead widened to a 5-2 spread off the stick of Peter Crinella and that completed the evening’s final tally.
Taz Burman recorded the win for the home team with 18 saves on 20 shots while Nolan Kent at Coventry’s end was 36 for 41.
“It’s been a very long time since we had a win that felt like such a relief,” admitted Head Coach Paul Dixon, “and it has been a very tough, stressful stretch for players, coaches and organisation.”
“After the last several games where we keep looking at what went wrong, whether we felt like we deserved defeat or not, it is just a great feeling for everyone in our dressing room to get back into the win column on home ice.”
“It is a short turnaround this week with Cardiff coming to us on Wednesday night, but certainly when we get back to training on the back of a win there will be a much more buoyant spirit among the guys and hopefully we can use it to re-store confidence and move on to more consistency in finding good results.”
