The Cardiff Devils battled back from 2 goals down to tie it late, but lost in extra time on Saturday to the Nottingham Panthers.
The Cardiff Devils battled back from 2 goals down to tie it late, but lost in extra time on Saturday to the Nottingham Panthers.
The visitors opened the scoring at 11:18 when the Devils failed to clear their zone and Samuel Herr set up Mark Matheson to make it 1-0.
At 25:40 Julian Talbot doubled the lead for the Panthers with a shot through traffic that beat Ben Bowns in the Cardiff goal. Some solid forechecking led to a turnover in the Panthers zone allowing Mike McNamee to set up Matt Pope at 33:57 to cut the lead to 2-1.
The final period saw the Devils pressing hard for the tying goal, which eventually came from a Gleason Fournier backhand that beat Kevin Carr at 53:20 to make it 2-2 with under 7 minutes to play.
The clock ticked down and the game headed into overtime where an early penalty by Joey Haddad gave the Panthers a man advantage and a perfect chance to win the game. Midway through the penalty, the Panthers were called for tripping and the teams were back to even, eventually resulting in a powerplay for the Devils of just over a minute.
But after Andrew Lord called a time-out to try and draw up a winning play, it was the Panthers who jumped on a loose puck off the faceoff resulting in Ollie Betteridge scoring the winning goal short-handed at 63:37 to give the Panthers the extra point.
Photo Credit: Helen Brabon & Dave Williams
