Belfast Giants head coach Adam Keefe hailed his short-benched side’s penalty-killing effort as “huge” as they rode a perfect night from their special teams to end the Coventry Blaze’s unbeaten start to the 2024/25 Elite League season and put up a four-point weekend of their own.
Winger J.J. Piccinich fired in a hat-trick in the victory at the SkyDome that saw a 6-for-6 night on the penalty kill and a 2-for-2 powerplay lead a Giants roster that was only able to ice three full lines to a revenge win on Sunday evening.
After losing to Kevin Moore’s side at the SSE Arena eight days prior, on this occasion, the Giants were well worthy of their victory that earned them a four-point weekend when allied with Saturday’s victory at Guildford.
Piccinich was undoubtedly the star man, scoring a goal in each period to take his season tally in 2024/25 to six, but his line on the whole was purring as Scott Conway opened the scoring with his seventh of the campaign, while there was also a first goal in teal for defenceman Bo Hanson, who rounded off the scoring late on.
Netminder Tom McCollum also had a strong start, backing up his impressive Saturday performance against the Flames with a 21-save effort that snapped Coventry’s winning streak at six while moving the Giants up to third, five points behind the Cardiff Devils having played a game less.
And, unsurprisingly, Keefe was most impressed by the special teams, which cost them in Nottingham exactly a week prior but proved to be the winning of this one, keeping the Blaze at bay six times when short-handed and providing Piccinich with two of his three goals on the powerplay.
“I loved the way we started the game, for sure, built ourselves a lead,” began the head coach.
“Second period, we knew the Blaze were going to push back, they’ve been coming back a lot from behind, we knew that, and it looked like they were going to do that again.
“It wasn’t the way we wanted to start the third period with a two-on-one right off the face-off, but Tom was huge, made a big save for us, and that allowed us to regain composure, and then we went down the other end and got a goal of our own to give us a little bit of insurance. That gave us a bit of confidence and more composure to see out the rest of the game.
“The penalties didn’t help, but our penalty kill was huge and we got two big powerplay goals, so we can’t complain.”
He will also be happy to see Piccinich off the mark for the League campaign having been kept off the scoresheet in his first six games, striking on the man advantage with 1:39 remaining in the first period to double the Giants’ lead after Conway had put them ahead at 11:10 when he forced in the rebound from Elijiah Barriga’s drive to the net following a dominant start to the game.
By the time Piccinich got on the board, the Giants had already killed off two penalties, although they had the post to thank for denying Jakob Stridsberg, and the winger doubled his account 8:08 after the restart, again on the powerplay as Morten Jürgens sat for hooking, to open up a three-goal lead.
But the Blaze showed why they were unbeaten to this point as they made it a one-goal game at the second intermission, Chase Gresock tipping in a Mike Kennedy shot at 29:07 to get them on the board, and then Jürgens finished off an odd-man rush with Alessio Luciani with 57 seconds remaining in the period to close the gap even further.
Rolling just three lines and with forward Ciaran Long back on defence, fatigue was a factor for the Giants, but the game was effectively put to bed when Piccinich rifled in from the edge of the right circle 1:08 into the final period, with the Blaze’s chance of a comeback gone when they failed to score on two subsequent powerplays.
And to rub salt in the wounds, Hanson got off the mark for his new team when his deflected effort hit the top corner with 4:46 left on the clock to ensure the Blaze couldn’t even pull netminder Mat Robson for the extra skater and improve the Giants’ early-season record to 4-2-1.