“It’s a good feeling and I’m so happy for the guys and so proud of them,” Vancouver Giants head coach Parker Burgess enthused.
Giants goaltender Kelton Pyne allowed just one in 35 shots as his club defeated the visiting Spokane Chiefs 3-1 with a 34-save performance at Langley Events Centre.
Spokane took control early and grabbed a 1-0 lead after 20 minutes of play, but Vancouver tied the game 12 minutes into the second period. Giants got the go-ahead goal from Joe Iginla midway through the third.
“I was absolutely gassed, so I was just trying to get as close to the net as possible and try to go bar down” Iginla said. “Didn’t quite go there, but I’ll take it. Great pass by [Will] Sharpe.”
That was followed by an empty net goal to give Vancouver the 3-1 win.
Misha Volotovskii returned to the lineup after missing last weekend and scored two goals, while Iginla’s tally was the game-winner and his first goal in a Giants uniform. Pyne was named the game’s first-star.
Vancouver improves to 19-29-1-2 (41 points) following the win. Spokane drops to 24-24-1-0 (49 points), currently sitting in ninth place in the Western Conference.
Tyus Sparks scored the lone goal for the Chiefs.
Before the game, Burgess said they talked about how a “bunch of small moments are going to be what’s going to lead to the big moment. We all wanted to win. You know, you want the results. You want to get things going on the right track. You want to get out of a slump. So it was just going to be mads up of a lot of small moments. I felt like we were confident; we had belief. We executed a lot of the things that we’d worked on in practice throughout the week: we were using indirects off the boards, we were changing going up the ice, just winning races, winning battles.”
Volotovskii hit the empty-net with four seconds left to put the game to bed.
Next, Giants continue their five-game home stand on Saturday against Kamloops. at 7 p.m.