It was last Friday when John Piccinich reached out to Belfast Giants commercial consultant Simon Kitchen about the possibility of coming over for the Challenge Cup Final. The biggest difficulty was keeping it a secret from son J.J.
With the Giants winger preparing for their first tilt at silverware of the season, taking on the Cardiff Devils at the SSE Arena on Wednesday night, parents John and Patty knew they had to be there to watch. And so began the most whirlwind of trips.
With a last-minute hotel room organised and tickets for the game sorted – “That was most important!” quips John – the pair hopped on a flight to Belfast that arrived in Wednesday morning and began arranging how to shock their son.
The idea was simple in execution: wait for the team to head out for warm-ups and then, once they were all on the ice, the couple would be brought out onto the bench without fanfare, waiting to see how long it would take for them to be noticed.
And when J.J. came back to the bench for the first time, he got a very pleasant surprise.
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“I had no idea! I was just warming up, came round the corner and our team brought them down to the bench and I saw them,” smiled J.J.
“My look was super confused, it probably wasn’t the look the media team were hoping for! I was so happy to see them, it was an awesome moment.
“I was so fired up after that. That really got me going during the game.”
Piccinich has been in exceptional form on his return season to the Giants, scoring 24 goals and 55 points in 60 games, but he reserved his best performance of the season for the Cup Final, chipping in with a vital second goal just before the first intermission on their way to a 4-0 win over the Devils.
While Scott Conway deserves a lot of credit for his perfectly timed pass to set up the goal, Piccinich did the lion’s share of the work as he won a puck battle along the boards in his own zone, fed his team-mate and continued the skate into the perfect position to deposit the puck into the roof of the net past Mac Carruth.
“That was some good security there. Really nice pass from Scott there. Going into the intermission up two feels a lot different to going in up one. Huge goal for us,” praised the 28-year-old winger.
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Now his sights are on even more silverware. The last time he was in Belfast, in the 2021-22 season, the Giants finished one game shy of a Grand Slam as they backed up Challenge Cup success with the Elite League title, but they couldn’t finish the job in the Play-Off Final against the Devils.
Therefore, Piccinich knows that the job is only a third of the way done. The Giants are three points clear at the top of the table with nine games remaining, and a game in hand, and with a second Grand Slam in three years a real possibility, there is a determination not to let this one slip from their grasp.
“(This title) is high up there but I don’t know how high yet. We’ll see how the rest of the year finishes because we’re not finished yet,” adds Piccinich.
“We’ll enjoy this one briefly but then it’s back to work for us. We’re excited for the challenge so it’s all really good.
“We just can’t get too high. We have more work to do but it’s nice to celebrate on the ice. We’ll enjoy it while it lasts and then get back to work.”