Flames spotted Manchester Storm a 3 goal lead by the time the game was a little more than 20 minutes old, but a Peter Crinella 3 goal game helped them recover that and more to put away a 6-4 pre season road win.
Stephen Johnson inside the last 2 minutes of the opening frame had Storm in a lead.
Just 14 seconds after re-start they doubled it through Will Merchant and 18 more seconds went by before Dallas Ehrhardt had the home team 3 goals to the good. The tide turned with Turner Ripplinger who got the visitors on the board when he netted in the 23rd minute. A 27th minute Lewis Hook marker had his side a goal off the pace and, at 28:32, Crinella brought Flames all the way back level. Owen Griffiths offered Spectrum’s men their first lead of the contest less than a minute after that and Crinella’s 2nd inside the period’s last 5 minutes set Flames to a 2 goal advantage. The multi goal spread was relatively shortlived, however, thanks to Santeri Haarala who made sure the frame timed out with Storm only a goal adrift.
In the 3rd, the scoring dried up entirely until 45 seconds from time when Crinella completed his hat trick into an empty net to nail down the win.
“It won’t surprise anyone to know we have a lot of things to clean up,” admitted Head Coach Paul Dixon.
“These games are for shaking off some rust and I think both teams had a fair bit of that, but we weathered a bit of very early season adversity and made some good chances count in the 2nd to get a win which is always nice even when the points don’t count.”
“We will be back at it Sunday and hopefully we can tighten things up a bit in front of our home crowd.”
