Braehead edged out by Storm in close encounter Winning streak hits buffers
Craig Ritchie
Braehead Clan’s three-game winning streak came to an end in the overtime of a fiesty encounter with Manchester Storm.
Clan will come away with a slight sense of what might have been following an end-to-end encounter against former coach Ryan Finnerty’s side.
Luke Moffat’s overtime effort was enough to send Clan’s dreams of a victory into a tailspin as the visitors simply edged out the encounter.
Storm started the game on the front foot and found themselves ahead after just nine minutes when they raced up the ice on the right hand side, with Moffat skating clear of Clan’s Christoffer Bjorklund.
His strike smashed back off the bar before bouncing back in to the path of Dane Byers to supply the finish. But the home side were undeterred in their efforts and they quickly levelled things up as Landon Oslanski cut in from behind the goal to tee up Michal Gutwald to slot past the Storm keeper.
Tensions were beginning to heighten as the challenges started coming in thick and fast.
Clan’s Zach Sullivan came off worst in a challenge involving Shane Bekker much to the anger of the home support, raging at the visitors’ tactics.
Braehead had a penalty shot in the early stages of the second when Adam Brace was impeded by Matt Stanisz, but Mike Clemente made the crucial block in the Storm goal.
Finnerty’s visitors thought they had found their second of the evening when a strike from Byers took a deflection and went in. However, the goal was ruled off as former Clan favourite Jay Rosehill impeded Ryan Nie’s crease.
The chances continued to come thick and fast and Craig Peacock was unlucky to see Clemente in fine form as he managed to block a fine individual effort from the Great Britain international.
But Manchester would have the lead before the end of the second period when Scott Pitt’s strike was blocked well by Nie.
However, Linden Springer’s rebound had just enough on it as it bounced off of Nie and into the back of the net.
Robbie Lepine was on hand to find an early equaliser for the hosts in the third period when Brendan Brooks laid off to him to fire into the top corner.
But the action finally reached boiling point when Gutwald got into an altercation with Linden Springer.
Shortly after, that saw the Clan D-man edge his opponent, to the delight of the home support.
No more goals in the third saw the game go the distance – and although Clan enjoyed good possession in the extra period, Moffat’s low effort beat Nie and Manchester celebrated victory.