Following tonight’s thumping of the Panthers the Giants have now had nine, yep just nine, shutouts away from home (37 in total) in their history and Stephen Murphy has two of them, both back-to-back. That’s 22% of all away game shutouts in the ten year history of our club. 4-0 was the score in game two of the home and home series with the Panthers to give the Giants all four point and an aggregate score of 10-3. Nottingham who were top of the table going into the weekend now find themselves in second with a three way tie for first place on points with the Giants and Blaze on 26 points. The problem for the Panthers after this disaster weekend is that they have played 22 games compared to the Giants 19 and Blaze’s 16.

Games in hand are only good if you win them but the Giants and Blaze are certainly throwing down a message to the Panthers that they will have to pick it up or risk falling behind. For the Giants the weekend couldn’t have went off better. Four points clawed back on Nottingham and holding pace with Coventry.

Two of the Giants goals came from Brandon Benedict (short handed) and Colin Shields in the third period but it was the first period, unassisted efforts of Jeff Szwez that did the big damage. One came on the powerplay at 2:50 of the game and the next shorthanded at 4:57. Fantastic. Szwez was ejected from last nights game for retaliating to the Panthers tactics on him that were designed for him to do just that but the Giants took the win anyway and tonight he really rubbed it into them with the two early goals to win the game. I just hope he celebrated close to the Panthers bench and particularly Neilson who provoked him into the cross-check that got him ejected last night.

The rough stuff part of the game from last night spilled into tonight’s game when Sean McMorrow did just what I was calling for him to do yesterday by stepping up to protect his coach Steve Thornton. While Thornton ended up with a roughing penalty with Marc Levers, McMorrow was ejected from the game after picking up a five minute checking-from-behind penalty and a five minute fighting penalty. The Panthers Mario Larocque got a match penalty for fighting for his troubles which will see him suspended from the next game. These facts are coming from the box scores because with no video yet available I cannot go into details on what exactly went down. When the video does come up, it’ll be worth a look, it always is when someone gets a match penalty.

But the fighting stuff was a side to what really mattered and that was the two points. The Giants really are starting to get on a roll now and Jeff Szwez and Colin Shields really are leading the way, with McMorrow clearing the path.

On the subject: Brandon Benedict, Colin Shields, Coventry Blaze, Jeff Szwez, Mario Larocque, Nottingham Panthers, Sean McMorrow | ALL SUBJECTS |

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