Nottingham Panthers moved to the top of the Elite League standings with a three-goal home victory over Coventry Blaze at the Motorpoint Arena on Saturday night.
“It was a really good bounce-back from last night for us,” said Nottingham’s Brendan Harris after the win. “It was nice to find some home success as we’ve struggled a little bit but we’re finding our groove. I feed off the energy of my line-mates and team-mates who put me in good situations to make plays. I got rewarded tonight.”
The Panthers got off to the perfect start when, off a Bryan Lemos faceoff win, Didrik Henbrant’s shot from the point sailed through traffic and beat Mat Robson just 4:39 into the game. Coventry, however, responded immediately – only 14 seconds later Jack Hopkins’ effort toward goal was redirected past Kevin Carr by Matthew Gleason to level the game.
Nottingham regained their lead at 12:04 when slick powerplay passing found Chase Pearson free at the far post for a simple tap-in. Early in period two, a superb Matt Alfaro pass set up Mitch Fossier for a one-timer that made it 3-1 just 93 seconds in. The Blaze hit back through Grayson Constable, who forced the puck over the line four minutes later to pull his team back within one.
“I thought the first two periods were pretty solid from us,” said Constable post-game. “Coming here and playing is always tough with the crowd the Panthers have, so I thought we handled ourselves well early on. In the third we got ourselves into trouble with penalties and found ourselves behind the eight ball. It was a tough way to end it.”
Just 39 seconds into the final period, a turnover in Coventry’s zone fell straight to Brendan Harris, who made no mistake to restore Nottingham’s two-goal cushion. With just over nine minutes left, Ross Armour’s deflection of David Noël’s point shot made it 5-2 and sealed the points for the home side.
“We forechecked hard, had a lot more intensity and that’s the level we’re going to need to find from ourselves,” added Harris. “It’s a huge win and ends the weekend on a good note where we got three out of four points.”
Constable concluded: “It’s a confidence booster to score, it doesn’t quite feel the same with the result but you try to do everything you can to put your team in a position to win. It wasn’t enough tonight, but we get to bounce back on Wednesday.”
Photo: Panthers Images
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