Working your way back from a season-long injury to play a professional sport again is tough enough as it is. To work your way back from a season-long injury to be the leading scorer not just on your team but in the entire League just 15 months later is tougher still.
So, for Elijiah Barriga to be coming off the back of a month where he has been nominated for Warrior of the Month by the Elite League and as the leading goalscorer in the entire Elite League – 11 in 14 games – and tied for second in points, it shows just how important his re-signing has been at the SSE Arena.
Both of those markers, unsurprisingly, are also team-leading stats for the Giants, who are most definitely celebrating their decision to show faith in Barriga and bring him back for a second season in teal despite the 28-year-old Californian shipping an ACL injury against Bolzano which saw him miss the entire 2023/24 campaign.
You now wonder what a fully-fit Barriga could have done in that roster given what he’s producing in the 2024/25 season. When allowed the freedom and ice time to play like he did in his rookie season in the Elite League with the Dundee Stars where he notched 30 goals and 69 points in 62 games, he has been every bit as dangerous for the Giants.
It has helped to find him the right line-mates, and in Scott Conway and J.J. Piccinich, he has two offensive dynamos to play off, too.
While Barriga doesn’t have the same profile as David Goodwin, who previously filled that left-wing slot, in that he is more of a goalscorer than the former Belfast captain, who was a playmaking savant, his ability to drop into the circles and play the angles has complemented Conway’s dead-eye accuracy and Piccinich’s all-round style.
It is remarkable to think that Barriga was originally signed as the Giants’ 13th forward in the 2024/25 season, almost on a try-out deal to see if his body would respond well to the rigours of the off-season and was capable of holding up after a year effectively idle.
How ironic that the player who, at the start of the season, was expected to sit in the stands when everybody was fit is more than likely now the first name on the list of players not to fill that role.
It is also a sign of how, for all the flak they get when the team drops one game, sometimes the Giants’ scouting department do get things very right.
Other teams very easily could have cut ties with Barriga, saying that ‘unfortunately due to circumstances out of everyone’s control’, but the Giants kept faith in their injured star and now they are reaping the rewards in the form of goals – and plenty of them.
Storm Darragh pending, which could scupper the Giants’ travel plans if the winds prove to be as severe as anticipated, head coach Adam Keefe will be relying on Barriga – and Conway and Piccinich, for that matter – to continue their red-hot form in front of goal when they face the Cardiff Devils at the Vindico Arena on Saturday night (7pm).
Already the Giants are 10 points behind the League leaders in the standings and, although they have three games in hand that could see them close that gap to just four, losing any more ground in the title race would leave them a significant mountain to climb.
It wouldn’t be impossible, of course. Belfast sides have closed bigger gaps and won titles in the past, and there are still 38 games to be played even after Sunday’s trip to the second-placed Coventry Blaze, so there is still plenty of race to be run.
But the Giants will certainly be cognisant that they can’t let their rivals get too far out of sight and leave themselves too much to do, particularly when it feels like most teams could take points off each other in the 2024/25 season.
While the schedule does favour them in terms of games to make up – and it is, as per usual, backloaded with home games to look forward to in the New Year – there is always the old adage that you’d rather be looking at the points on the board rather than looking for them.
A pivotal weekend awaits for Keefe and his side against the teams ranked first and second in the Elite League standings. Here’s where their title credentials will really be tested.