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Beauregard late double secures Phoenix another valuable win

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Manchester Phoenix 4 – 2 Edinburgh Capitals

A brace of goals in the last five minutes from the league-leading scorer David-Alexandre Beauregard steered Manchester Phoenix past a hard-battling Edinburgh outfit on Thursday night.

Phoenix started well on Thursday night but found Caps goalie Pasi Raitanen in good form as he made a number of early saves to keep the scoreboard blank. That was until the ninth minute when Kenton Smith found player coach Tony Hand and the veteran Scot arrowed a pin-point shot into the bottom left corner of the visitors goal. Edinburgh were unlucky not to draw level on a powerplay as a shot from Jason Cassell crashed off a post and back into play. Phoenix enjoyed more scoring opportunities, but had to settle for the narrow lead at the first break.

Phoenix doubled their advantage early in the second period as a tremendous right wing shot from Alex Dunn was sweetly re-directed past Raitanen off the stick of Brett Clouthier. Phoenix ran into penalty trouble with first Dunn and then Josh Garbutt sin-binned and Edinburgh reduced the arrears on the two-man advantage, Martin Cingel scoring from close range in the 26th minute. Referee Coenen raised the ire of the crowd when he gave a ten-minute Misconduct penalty against Phoenix player coach Tony Hand after Edinburgh appeared to escape a Tripping penalty. Phoenix then saw a shot hit the goalframe as Luke Fulghum was denied and a tight game went to the second interval.

Phoenix were again unlucky on an early powerplay in the third period as captain Kenton Smith saw a shot cannon back into play of the goalframe with Raitanen clutching at straws. With the Scots still harbouring thoughts of the post-season playoffs, they began to push forward strongly and they tied the game up at two apiece with less than seven minutes to play, Taylor Christie the goalscorer. Phoenix didn’t want overtime and regained the lead two minutes later as hotshot David-Alexandre Beauregard chipped home at the back post on a feed from Fulghum. And with the Capitals pulling the goalie for the extra skater, it was Beauregard who fired the puck three quarters the length of the Altrincham to register his sides fourth of the night and his 55th goal of the season with seconds remaining..

A Phoenix spokesperson noted, “Once again, the guys played a solid game. We knew Edinburgh would come hard and they did. We always felt in control of the game, and when we needed to move up a gear late on, the guys did do excellently. The Misconduct penalty on Tony Hand was disappointing, we thought we should have had a powerplay for a Trip and it appeared that the referee took umbrage at Tony shaking his head.”

Phoenix travel to the Hull Stingrays in Elite League action on Saturday, before hosting the Belfast Giants at 5.30pm on Sunday in the first leg of the Challenge Cup Final.