Flames fell behind early, but recovered later in the contest to deliver their first Cup points of the new season with a 3-2 home win over Coventry Blaze.
Blaze got an early strike off the stick of Tyler Kirkup, but that proved to be the only scoring in the opening frame.
Just over 5 minutes in to the 2nd, Ryan Tait was the beneficiary of a good fortune bounce that rolled its way into the back of the net to level the game at a goal each. Flames best chance to nudge in front came in the back half of the period when Turner Ripplinger was awarded a penalty shot. He couldn’t find his spot and the game resumed at 1 apiece, but about 3 minutes from period time, Peter Crinella helped them close 40 minutes holding a slim 2-1 margin.
After re-start, at 45:23, Lewis Hook netted his first Cup or League goal in Flames colours, the winner as things turned out, to extend the home lead to a pair. It was a short-lived cushion as Coventry replied through James Shearer just over a minute later, but Flames were able to nurse the lead through the finish to get off the mark in their Cup group.
Taz Burman turned aside 22 of 24 shots while Taran Kozun was good on 37 of 40.
“It’s two pretty evenly matched teams out there with Coventry so there were shifts in momentum back and forth throughout the night,” said Paul Dixon.
“Having said that, I think we definitely carried enough of the play to be good for the win so certainly we are pleased to have generated the offence when we did to be able to grab some Cup points.”
“We are looking forward to being able to stay at home tomorrow night to be ready for Nottingham Panthers and hopefully we can make a few adjustments and generate our first League win of the new schedule.”
