Stingrays Blunted, Flyers Shot Down

• Belfast Giants vs Fife Flyers, W 7-1
• Giants Goals: Pelle, Kuiper, Dowd, Peacock, Clarke, Rebek, Hoffman
• Flyers Goals: Gunn

With another weekend over and two more victories in the bank, the Belfast Giants continue to sit atop the Elite league standings.

A two night home stand saw the Hull Stingrays visit on Friday night, followed by the ever-improving Fife Flyers. However, after two fantastic road wins in Nottingham, complacency had to be avoided in what were eminently winnable games against teams from the lower end of the standings with those teams fighting important battles of their own and just as desperate for points as the Giants.

Friday night was very much the Jeffrey Mason show. Competition for the Giants MVP will be tight between Mason and Robert Dowd, who opened the scoring to continue a great run of form, while defenceman Mason bagged his first ever hat-trick in a solid win over the Stingrays. Mason also picked up an assist for another fine night for the Giants. Mike Hoffman continued his good form since returning to Belfast adding 2 goals of his own, while Stephen Murphy faced only 16 shots in the game including only one in the entire middle period as the Giants emerged 6-1 winners.

After a difficult start to the season, the Fife Flyers have improved and begun to pick up results against the teams around them, while also pushing the likes of the Sheffield Steelers and Coventry Blaze close in other games. The Flyers have closed the gap to the rest of the league and, while the playoffs are probably just too far out of range, a few more wins may be enough to enable them to avoid the wooden spoon in their debut Elite League season.

Despite a strong opening ten minutes, and another solid display from Flyers goalie Zemlak, the gap in quality between the top of the league and bottom was evident.

Seven different scorers for the Giants in a 7-1 victory showed the depth of the home side roster, while once again Stephen Murphy was not overly tested in the home goal allowing Andrew Dickson to make his longest appearance to date despite Murphy holding a shut out going into the final ten minutes.

Aaron Clarke added a goal and 3 assists for a man of the match appearance while Adam Keefe picked up a misconduct and game penalty for his reaction to the celebrations of Stephen Gunn who scored a debated penalty shot on the Giants back-up goalie with just 9 seconds remaining. This puts Keefe in danger of a suspension should he pick up one more misconduct penalty before the season is out.

A solid home weekend with 4 more points collected, allied with a Steelers loss in Nottingham leaves the Giants 9 points clear but having played 5 more games than Sheffield in second place. With 3 of the Giants remaining 9 league games being against the Steelers, Belfast hold the destination of the title firmly in their own hands, but can afford no more slip ups between now and that final home league game against Nottingham on March 24th.

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