Coventry Blaze take it in Overtime

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A 38-22 shot advantage and a lead with 8 minutes remaining did help Flames get a point, but a late penalty put them down 3 men to 4 during overtime and 59 seconds into the tiebreaker Evan Bloodoff delivered the winner to ensure Blaze would collect the 2nd table point on offer with the 4-3 score.

Ian McNulty opened the scoring just under 6 minutes in for a 1-0 Flames lead, but Blaze levelled at 8:28 through Janne Kivilahti. An extended Flames 5 on 3 manpower advantage could not be claimed for a goal and 77 seconds from period time Blaze took their first advantage of the evening with a John Curran strike; a lead they held all the way through a scoreless middle set.

At 46:31, while enjoying an equivalent 2 to 1 shot advantage, Flames finally broke through to square it off the stick of Chris Gerrie and exactly 8 minutes from close the home team stepped back in front with McNulty’s 2nd of the contest. Unfortunately, a little over 5 minutes out Luke Ferrara knotted it at 3 goals each and a Flames minor penalty assessed just 22 seconds from a deciding 4th period helped Bloodoff and the Blaze powerplay close out the evening.

“If we had all the answers for how to grind our way to a result we wouldn’t need to talk about the extreme difficulties we are having grinding our way to a result right now,” admitted Paul Dixon.

“If we were just outclassed or outworked or out anything every single night, it would be easier to pinpoint something and try to adjust that, but that’s simply not the case.”

“In this particular case, we outshot them by a mile, we had the bulk of the possession, we had a lead late in the 3rd period and here we are again scratching our heads and disappointed that we could only get 1 point from this when we had a clear leg up on getting both.”

“Every guy in this room is feeling it right now, and it is hard to come to the rink with confidence, and belief, and every time we add another loss on to the string the weight on us gets heavier and heavier. Somehow, we have to remain upbeat, and try to find a way to push ahead under just about the most trying circumstances this club had ever experienced.”