Excel Hull Stingrays 2-8 Belfast Giants
The Belfast Giants condemned the Excel Hull Stingrays to their fourth pointless weekend of the season with an embarrassing six goal defeat at the Hull Arena.
In front of Sky cameras, the Stingrays found themselves down by six goals with less than five minutes remaining in the game before Sylvain Cloutier and Konstantin Kalmikov finally hit the twine with consolation goals for the Rays. However, the Giants hit two further goals to complete the embarrassment for Cloutier's men.
One of the few highlights of the night for home fans was the tussle between the Stingrays Adam Knight and Sean McMorrow, of the Giants, with the two tough guys fighting out two entertaining scraps as the Northern Irish side cruised to victory.
The result will pose further questions over the makeup of Cloutier's squad. Not just for the defence, which conceded eight goals, but also the offence, which failed to hit the net until the 57th minute, and, although they were without Jason Silverthorn, Lee Mitchell and Pavel Gomenyuk, this result will surely be deemed unaccepted by player-coach Cloutier, despite a couple of encouraging losses in recent weeks.
SOG: 42-38
PIM: 14-28
