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GAME SUMMARY

The Blazers came out with a ton of energy on Friday and set the tone early on.

They were rewarded for their hard work at the 5:23 mark of the opening period, when Connor Radke connected with Sullivan on a 2-on-1, who beat Mirwald on the stick side with a wrist shot from the slot.

It took Vancouver several minutes after that to get going, and late in the period – after a couple consecutive shifts on play in the o-zone – Tyson Zimmer fed a pass from behind the net to Lipinski, who quickly potted it top shelf from the side of the goal to tie the game at one.

😝#GianeNewEra | #Flames | @NHLFlames https://t.co/9VewUFKKjf pic.twitter.com/BtDJC9S1Sl

— X – Vancouver Giants (@WHLGiants) March 16, 2024

The Giants stuck with their game in the third period and didn’t get rattled, eventually finding the go-ahead goal after a smart play from Leslie to drive wide and circle the net, before throwing a puck towards the slot, which eventually landing right for Halaburda at the far post, who made no mistake.

With the Blazers goalie out, Mirwald would have to make some big time stops to keep the game at 2-1, but Levis scored into the empty net, making it a 3-1 final score.

THEY SAID IT

“It was a tough game. Kamloops – give them credit – they came in, they worked hard, they’re always structured. You’ve got to earn everyhting against them. They give you nothing for free. They came after us at the very beginning and got out to an early lead and made it pretty difficult for us, but I thought after the 10-minute mark of the first period, we kind of got our legs going again and then we started creating some chances from our forecheck and then we settled in. Second period I thought we were fine. I thought the third period was fine too. We had a lot of good looks tonight. We just weren’t sharp in that area as far as finishing wise, but as far as Grade-A chances, we had a lot of them tonight.” – Head Coach Manny Viveiros on the game overall

“I liked the way our kids responded after the second period. Like I said, we had some really good chances and they were the ones that said themselves, ‘let’s calm down a little bit,’ …So you could see the kids were getting a little bit frustrated, but they calmed themselves down and they were saying the right things and doing the right things by continuing to keep playing. Going into the third period it was still a 1-1 hockey game and we were able to get the job done.” – Head Coach Manny Viveiros 

“We’re building towards the first round of the playoffs. Obviously we don’t know who we’re playing against and we still have, as a group, our goal is fifth place. That’s something we want here. Our kids treated this today, and all week long, like a playoff game for us tonight. You can see with the intensity that our kids had and a little bit of nervousness also in the first period too. Our kids wanted this game real bad and we knew it wasn’t going to be easy against Kamloops, because like I said before, they give you nothing for free. You have to work for everything and we stuck with it. That was the positive part, which also leads to that process too.” – Head Coach Manny Viveiros