Ice Hockey
THE Belfast Giants lost their second home game on the bounce on Saturday night, this time in a 3-2 defeat to the Cardiff Devils at the Odyssey.
Evan Mosey's opener and a late Cole Sanford double guaranteed victory for the Welsh Devils, while Kohei Sato and Greg Printz were on target for the hosts.
In the first period, Travis Brown forced Ben Bowns into making his first save of the evening to deny a well-hit goal-bound attempt.
Shortly after that, the Cardiff Devils picked up a two-minute penalty for tripping, but the Belfast Giants weren’t able to take advantage of the extra skater.
Richardson was involved shortly after his penalty when his rebounded effort was well saved by Tyler Beskorowany.
The Giants dominated the last five minutes of the first period, with Bowns forced into a string of impressive saves, the first to deny Johnny Curran and the next to prevent Ara Nazarian finding the back of the net.
In the second period, just after the restart, Quinn Preston demonstrated great speed to find some space, but his resulting shot was straight at the torso of Bowns.
The next phase of the second period then became the Bowns show as the Cardiff netminder had to make back-to-back stops to deny the Giants a goal. The best of the pair was to stop captain Mark Cooper’s shot, before he also saved superbly from a Miles Gendron’s snap shot directly after.
The Cardiff Devils opened the scoring on 28:22 through Evan Mosey thanks to assisting passes from forwards Trevor Cox and Justin Crandall.
Shortly after, River Rymsha was called for hooking, but yet again the Giants couldn’t take advantage of the powerplay.
Cardiff netminder Bowns continued to show great skill and made another superb save to deny Greg Printz’s just before the buzzer.
Early in the third period, Tyler Busch tried his luck from the blueline in a vain attempt to give Cardiff a more comfortable lead. However, Kohei Sato levelled the game on 45:02 after slotting home the rebound from Sean Norris’ shot which resulted from a Ciarán Long pass.
Cole Sanford gave Cardiff the lead once again when a great pass from Josh Waller left him with space, and his fierce effort flew past Tyler Beskorowany.
Not to be deterred, the Giants scored at 56:39 to level the game once again when Charlie Curti sent a shot to the scrum in front of the net for Greg Printz to tap in.
However, that wasn’t to be the end of the goals for the night as, with just 47 seconds left, Cole Stanford beat Miles Gendron to the puck, gained possession and carried the puck singlehandedly to Beskorowany, putting it past him to make sure it was Cardiff who would secure the two points.
The Belfast Giants are back on the road tonight, as they take on the Guildford Flames in Surrey.
They are next back on home ice on Saturday, November 25 after their stint on the road.
