A terrible opening period for the Devils resulted in a game of catch-up that eventually resulted in a 6-4 loss on for the Devils against the Nottingham Panthers.
Tim Billingsley opened the scoring for the Panthers just 47 seconds into the game. At 11:57 Robert Farmer doubled their lead and then at 14:56 David Clarke scored on the powerplay to make it 3-0. Raphael Bussieres rounded out the scoring for the first period at 18:11 to cap off a dominating opening 20 minutes of play for the hometown Panthers and a 4-0 scoreline.
The lone goal of the middle period saw the Devils finally get on the board when Layne Ulmer took a pass from Joey Martin to score on a Devils powerplay at 30:26, making it 4-1 after two periods of play.
The Devils found themselves killing a 5 on 3 penalty at the start of the third period, but despite that Joey Martin was awarded a penalty shot at 43:13 after breaking free during the penalty-kill. Martin scored to make it 4-2 and give the Devils some hope. The Panthers remained on the 2-man advantage and David Clarke netted for the 2nd time in the game to restore the 3-goal lead for the Panthers at 43:47.
With 6 minutes to play, Sean Bentivoglio scored on the powerplay to pull the Devils within 2 goals, making it 5-3 at 54:00. Then with the netminder pulled, Matthew Myers scored at 59:06 to pull the Devils within a goal with just under a minute to play. The Devils comeback ended with Robert Lachowicz picking up a loose puck and finding Jeff Brown who fired the puck into the empty net with 18 seconds on the clock to round out the scoring at 6-4 for the Panthers.
Photo: Panthers Images
