Manchester Storm celebrated a four-point weekend with a five-goal thrashing of Fife Flyers in league play, following up a road Cup win over Nottingham less than 24 hours earlier.
“When you get those results, it’s good for the confidence!” began Storm forward Brady Gilmour. “We’ve been close the last couple of weeks, a couple of tight games, but we still weren’t overly happy, obviously with the results and just our play in general. I think we’re taking the right steps to get there, and it translated to the game tonight.”
A relatively uneventful first period saw Manchester build a 2-0 lead heading into the break thanks to two late goals. Before that, their best chance came when a flipped puck out of the zone saw Gilmour knock it down out of mid-air to put himself on a breakaway, although he eventually over-handled and couldn’t get the backhand shot away.
The breakthrough came with two goals in quick succession. Brandon Cutler ripped one home from the faceoff dot with just under a minute left, before Gilmour scored on an almost identical play some 20 seconds later.
The second period followed a similar pattern, as Storm continued their theme of scoring in bunches. This time, it was Gilmour who started things off rather than finishing them, putting home his second of the game after a bouncing puck landed perfectly on his stick in the crease. JD Dudek followed with an excellent wraparound on Shane Owen at 28:18 to make it 4-0.
After Brandon Cutler and Ian Scheid dropped the gloves, it was the visitors who got the next goal – Garet Hunt tapping in at the back post at 32:24 to get his side on the board.
Two per period was the trend for Storm, and that continued in the third. Cutler converted on the powerplay to make it 5-1 at 47:41, before Kaleb Ergang added a sixth with just over seven minutes remaining to the delight of the 1,867-strong crowd.
Gilmour, who ended the weekend with three goals and four points, added: “I think any time you’re on the ice, you want to contribute in one way or another. There are different ways to contribute, but getting on the scoresheet obviously feels good. A lot of credit goes to the guys I’m playing with: Steveo and Gary have done a great job the last couple of games especially, and we’re starting to build some good chemistry.”
Photo: Mark Ferris