After a slow start to their first game of the season, The Stena Line Belfast Giants turned up the heat to win in overtime 5-4 over the Tilburg Trappers on Saturday Night.

It was all Giants in the opening minutes, but a sloppy defensive error handed Tilburg their first opportunity of the game and they silenced the home crowd to take an early 1-0 lead.

It didn’t take long for Robby Sandrock to remind the Odyssey fans why he was so loved during his first stint with the Giants back in 2002. A cannon from Sandrock on the powerplay was tipped by Darryl Lloyd to make it 1-1. Still in the first period, Tilburg took to the powerplay then a questionable call put the Giants down two men, with Tilburg eventually scoring to make it 2-1 to the visitors. Before the period was out, the Giants evened the scoreline courtesy of Adam Keefe who fired home a sweet pass from Craig Peacock to tie the game at 2 a piece.

The second period started again with a goal from the visitors, this time it came from former Giant Josh Prudden who took advantage of a Giants turnover and buried it past his old teammate Stephen Murphy to make it 3-2.

Despite being a pre-season friendly, this game was intense with some big hits from both teams, and a couple of fights after tempers boiled over with new Giants Sam Roberts and Greg Stewart both getting into bouts against the Dutch side. Speaking of Stewart, he evened the scoreline at 3 a piece to tie the game going into the 3rd.

After 2 periods of struggling to gel, the Giants seemed to finally be on the same page in the third, and seemed to be dominating the majority of the play but still Tilburg stayed in the game, mostly because of the outstanding play of netminder Ian Meirdress who faced 47 shots on the night.

In fact, despite the one way play most of the third, it was Tilburg who scored in the dying minutes to take the lead 4-3. It looked like it was going to end with an opening night loss for the Giants, but with less than 2 minutes on the clock, Mark Garside jammed in the tying goal past Meirdress to make it 4-4 and send this pre-season friendly into sudden death overtime.

The Giants pressed hard into overtime and were justly rewarded with a Brock Matheson goal to win the game and send the near 3,000 Odyssey crowd into a frenzy. Everyone went home happy after a great battle between to teams that played more like a playoff game than a pre-season friendly.

Next up it’s on the road to Braehead on Saturday September 8th in Challenge Cup action. The Giants host their league season home opener on September 20th against the Dundee Stars.