The Giants took their sloppy game down the road as they had to rely upon their back-up goaltender to save their bacon. Tyson Sexsmith had a fantastic game turning aside all comers in the shootout for the win, and stoning the Seattle snipers all night long. The Giants were guilty of taking poor penalties and not cranking up the intensity and as a result squandered a two goal lead. Their passing seemed to be a lot slower than it has been in this new season, and they were frequently getting stripped of the puck.

The Giants opened the scoring three-quarters into the first with Brett Festerling feeding Machacek in the face-off circle. Machacek snapped the puck toward the net with Kyle Lamb deflecting the puck past Yeomans for the only goal of the first period. The Giants had a decent first, but continued to take lazy penalties which at times felt more like the ref punishing physical play rather than calling a balanced game. However, Vancouver was fairly lucky to get out of the first on top as they killed seven penalties against in that stanza and could have been down except for the stellar puck stopping the 17 year old goalie brought tonight .

The G-Men padded their lead early in the second as they took advantage of a turnover during their PK. Jonathon Blum made a nice headman pass to JD Watt, who dished it off to Jason Reese on an odd-man rush. Reese snapped the puck on Yeomans and was stopped but managed to collect the rebound and deposit it behind the former Rockets ‘tender who had given the Giants so much grief in the past. The T-Birds got one goal back midway in the second as the Aaron Gagnon deflected Bretton Stamler’s point shot up and over glove-side on Sexsmith. The Seattle team completed their come-back about three minutes later, when another of their twenty year-olds Kyle Pess intercepted the puck in the neutral zone, went in all alone, swept wide and snapped the puck past Sexsmith to tie the game at twos.

The third was a scoreless affair with the ref deciding to pocket the whistle mid-way to let the teams actually play. Unfortunately, it seemed the T-Birds were the more hungry team and if not for some sparkling saves and several timely flashes of leather by Sexsmith, this game would have been put out of reach of the Vancouver squad. The T-Birds out shot the Giants in the third 9-4 and sounded like the more intense of the two squads, but once again Tyson kept his team in a game they had been trying to hand back since the middle of the second period.

The Giants had a great overtime period and showed the most life in the extra stanza and although the official score sheet seems to say the T-Birds out shot the G-Men in the OT, but listening to it it seemed like the Giants badly out shot the T-Birds so I’m a tad confused right now about that, and also them (the WHL site box score) awarding the game winning shoot-out goal to Milan Lucic as opposed to Michal Repik who was in fact the goal-scorer.

Tyson Sexsmith turned away all shooters in the final showdown, getting some leather on Gagnon’s shot and deflecting it wide of the goal, stymieing Durand and robbing Pess to give his team a chance for the victory. Michal Repik (the fourth shooter) made a nice deke and flipped the puck back-hand over Yeomans for the win.

There were no fights that I recall, and it sounded like Seattle played a bit of a stifling game, sitting back, intercepting passes and blocking a ton of shots. The game itself had no flow due to the officiating and the respective teams play and only began to get ramped up late in the third period. Derek Yeomans robbed a few Giants players over the course of the evening and made it difficult for the G-men to pad their lead early on.

Shots were Giants 23, T-Birds 30. Giants killed all 10 of Seattle power plays, but went 0 for 7 on their own man-advantages. The bright spot for the Giants team was their PK, as it seemed to give the G-men more life on the ice and garnered them a short-handed tally. The Giants play their third game in three days tomorrow night versus the Prince George Cougars. Puck drops at 5 pm at the Coliseum.

[b]Three Stars[/b]
1 – Tyson Sexsmith
2 – Kyle Pess
3 – Michal Repik