Sunday night’s clash with the Fife Flyers was a must-win game for the Cardiff Devils – and win they did.
The Devils came out flying, piling on the pressure for the first six minutes of the opening period.
With James Isaacs in the penalty box for the Flyers, Patrick Asselin opened the scoring on the powerplay for the Devils with Sean Bentivoglio and Andrew Hotham picking up the assists on the opening goal at 6:08.
Some great forechecking by the line of Crowder, Faryna and Haddad led to the puck being deflected into the middle of the ice, where Gleason Fournier grabbed it and rifled a wrist shot over the shoulder of Andy Iles to give the Devils a 2-0 lead at 11:55.
The Flyers pulled a goal back midway through the second period when Chase Schaber stole the puck off the Devils behind the home goal and jammed it in the back of the net before Ben Bowns was aware of where the puck was at 31:32.
Into the third and it was all Devils for the first five minutes resulting in a Joey Martin goal.
Fife’s netminder played the puck direct to Josh Batch who found Martin streaking into the zone for the goal at 44:37.
Paul Crowder put the Devils up 4-1 at 52:58 after a scoring chance for Faryna left Crowder with the rebound that he put past Iles.
Next up for the Devils is a trip to Glasgow on Wednesday evening to face the Braehead Clan before returning to Cardiff for a home match next Saturday against the Coventry Blaze.
A terrible opening period for the Devils resulted in a game of catch-up that eventually saw them lose 6-4 against the Nottingham Panthers on Saturday night.
Tim Billingsley opened the scoring for the Panthers just 47 seconds into the game.
At 11:57 Robert Farmer doubled their lead and then at 14:56 David Clarke scored on the powerplay to make it 3-0.
Raphael Bussieres rounded out the scoring for the first period at 18:11 to cap off a dominating opening 20 minutes of play for the hometown Panthers.
The solitary goal of the middle period saw the Devils finally get on the board when Layne Ulmer took a pass from Martin to score on a Devils powerplay at 30:26, making it 4-1 after two periods of play.
The Devils found themselves killing a 5 on 3 penalty at the start of the third period, but despite that Martin was awarded a penalty shot at 43:13 after breaking free during the penalty-kill.
Martin scored to make it 4-2 and give the Devils some hope.
The Panthers remained on the two-man advantage and David Clarke netted for the second time in the game to restore the three-goal lead at 43:47.
With six minutes to play, Sean Bentivoglio scored on the powerplay to pull the Devils within two goals, making it 5-3 at 54:00.
Then with the netminder pulled, Matthew Myers scored at 59:06 to pull the Devils within a goal with just under a minute to play.
The Devils comeback ended with Robert Lachowicz picking up a loose puck and finding Jeff Brown who fired the puck into the empty net with 18 seconds on the clock to round out the scoring at 6-4 for the Panthers.
