Pensacola, Fl.: Behind stellar goaltending from Cody Karpinski against his former team, the Thunderbolts rallied from a 2-0 deficit to come back and defeat the Ice Flyers 3-2 in a shootout on Friday night at the Pensacola Bay Center. The Thunderbolts’ next home game at Ford Center will be on Friday, January 23rd against the Birmingham Bulls at 7:00pm CT.
Pensacola grabbed the game’s first lead late in the first period, with Tyler Burnie scoring on a back-door pass at 15:50. 48 seconds later, the Ice Flyers doubled their lead to 2-0 as Zack Jones scored on a 2-on-1 rush at 16:38. Evansville’s trend of strong second periods continued, starting with Connor Tait batting in a puck at the side of the net from Eelis Laaksonen and Will van der Veen at 7:41 to trim the deficit to 2-1 Pensacola. On the power play late in the period, the Thunderbolts nearly fell behind 3-1 with a shorthanded 2-on-0 rush by Pensacola as Tyler Burnie passed across to Tyler German, but a sure goal was robbed by Karpinski, who dove across to make the pad save. The save proved to be a massive momentum swinger, as Evansville scored one second after the power play expired to tie the game 2-2, with Berkopec scoring the goal from Myles Abbate at 17:11. After a scoreless third period and overtime, where Karpinski again denied a 2-on-0 scoring chance, the game went to a shootout. Behind goals in the first round by Scott Kirton and fourth round from Abbate and another 4 saves on 5 shootout attempts by Karpinski, Evansville ended their losing streak of five consecutive shootouts and completed the comeback, 3-2 the final score to open the weekend doubleheader at Pensacola.
Abbate scored the shootout-winning goal plus an assist, with Tait and Berkopec also scoring one goal each. In goal, Cody Karpinski stopped 30 of 32 shots on goal in regulation and overtime and 4 of 5 in the shootout for his 2nd win of the season. The Thunderbolts and Ice Flyers meet again on Saturday, January 17th at Pensacola Bay Center, with Evansville leading the regular season series 1-0.
