The Genting Casino Coventry Blaze came from two down in the Elite League to beat the Fife Flyers 2-4 in Scotland on Saturday.
Fife were without import forwards Ben Hawerchuk, Kyle Osterberg, Anthon Eriksson and Johan Eriksson but did hand a debut to Latvian centre Vitalijs Pavlovs.
Despite their offensive ranks being depleted, the Flyers came out the stronger and took a deserved lead at 11.40 through Casey Gilling who finished neatly following a feed from Lucas Chiodo.
Fife got fortunate to double their lead at 23.45 when Sean Giles’ shot from the blue-line bounced awkwardly off the back boards and into the Blaze net off the pads of netminder Taran Kozun.
The home sides two goal lead lasted just one minute as at 24.45 Shane Owen in the Flyers’ goal was beaten for the first time by J.D. Dudek whose goal came from Kobe Roth’s pass from right to left.
Down by one after two periods, the Blaze came out with real intent to take advantage of their short-benched opponents in the third and their efforts paid dividends.
Roth tied the game with his league leading tenth goal of the season, shooting through traffic past Owen at 46.15 and the visitors used that momentum to go on and claim the two road points.
Defenceman Alexander Kuqali was a threat to the Flyers all night, putting the puck on net at every opportunity and his shot at 51.53 turned out to be the game winner.
Coventry didn’t make it easy on themselves, though, taking a penalty in the final couple of minutes which gave Fife the opportunity to pull Owen for the extra skater and go 6-on-4.
Thankfully, Alessio Luciani was able to throw the puck from one end to the other and find the Flyers net to score his sixth goal in seven games and end the scoring 2-4.
Photo credit: Flyers Images
