Friday night’s road trip game against Tri-City Americans did not begin or end well for the Vancouver Giants, with the home team striking first and going on to win 5-2.
Marek Howell scored his first goal of the season midway through the first and Cameron Schmidt scored on a breakaway a few minutes later, but those first period tallies were the only goals the Giants would score
The loss drops the Giants’ overall record to 8-9-0-1, while the Americans improve to 7-7-1-0.
Burke Hood made 30 saves in a game where the Americans outshot Vancouver 35-24.
Savin Virk had two of the five Tri-City goals. Gavin Garland, Crew Martinson and Jaxon Adam had the other Americans’ tallies.
Giants Assistant Coach Gaelan Patterson said the team “didn’t have the start we wanted, obviously – they got one in the first five minutes.”
“We didn’t really do a great job of adapting to their style of play and playing a different game,” Patterson commented.
“[Their style] is kind of ‘flip the puck out’, ‘chuck the puck up’ and hope for the best kind of thing. We’re a rush team. We’re a fast, rush team, but it just kept not going our way and then I think there was a little bit of frustration. They won a lot of battles in the offensive zone. We couldn’t recover pucks quick enough and get them back into a scoring chance.”
Garland opened the scoring just 48 seconds in after getting a puck all alone in front of the net.
Vancouver equalized midway through the first on an play from Howell, who had the puck at the left point and held on long enough to get the forward covering him to commit to a block by dropping down to one knee. Howell then walked around him to the top of the left circle and launched a wrist shot to the top corner to tie the game 1-1.
A few minutes later, the Giants took their first lead of the night when Aaron Obobaifo sprung Schmidt for yet another breakaway.
Tri-City tied the game in the final minute of the first on a power play.
Virk scored the only goal of the second period to make it 3-2 for the Americans.
The insurance marker came midway through the third period when Adam moved in from the right point and spun off a check before beating Hood on the blocker side.
The Americans added an empty-net goal with less than two seconds left to seal the deal and make it a 5-2 final score.
Next, Giants face the Seattle Thunderbirds Saturday night and then host the Everett Silvertips on Monday.