Vancouver Giants improved their record at the expense of the bottom-dwelling Seattle Thunderbirds with a 5-2 victory before 3,026 at the Langley Events Centre on Sunday, Dec. 1.
Giants record is now 11-9-4 this season, while the Thunderbirds, in last place in the Western conference, fell to 9-15-2-1.
Special teams played a big role, with Vancouver's penalty kill going 4-on-4 and their power play going 1-for-3.
Adam Titlbach and Connor Levis each had a goal and an assist in the win, while Matthew Hutchison came up big with a 25-save performance, picking up his first win since November 2. Cameron Schmidt, Will Subject and Ty Halaburda also scored for the G-Men. Vancouver outshot Seattle 33-27.
Giants Video Coach Kayden Jarvis called it "a good performance overall."
Jarvis praised Hutchison for "playing with a little bit more pace now."
"He's doing a good job on the forecheck, getting through bodies and that's when he's at his best, is when he's willing to work down low and get to those hard areas. For sure, these last few games, he's done a good job of that," Jarvis said.
"He was on his game, he controlled pucks, he made a couple huge saves 鈥� scrambly saves, where you could [see] his athleticism there and his compete, so for us tonight, that was huge. There were moments where he made that save to keep us in the game 鈥� to not let it get away from us."
Giants opened the scoring for just the ninth time this season when Titlbach and Levis connected on a 2-on-2 rush, with the latter roofing it over Scott Ratzlaff from the right circle.
A power play marker from Schmidt 11:54 into the second period extended Vancouver's lead to 2-0, after he followed up his own blocked shot and tucked it past the outstretched pad of Ratzlaff from the goal line.
Early in the third period, Subject 鈥� while playing forward 鈥� deflected in a point shot from Mazden Leslie for his first goal of the season.
Seattle got on the board at the 10:02 mark of the third period to cut Vancouver's lead to 3-1, but 1:39 later, Titlbach redirected in a Tyler Thorpe centering feed from the right boards to restore the Giants three-goal advantage.
Seattle's Parmar made things interesting when he stole the puck and finished on the backhand to make the score 4-2 with 4:54 remaining, but Halaburda's empty-net goal with 1:43 left put the icing on the cake.
Next, Giants host Regina Pats on Wednesday, Dec. 4 at the LEC at 7 p.m.
