Logan Thompson matched his career-high with 41 saves to give the South Carolina Stingrays (26-5-3-1) a 4-1 victory over the Florida Everblades (22-11-2-2) on Saturday night in front of 5,238 fans at the North Charleston Coliseum.
Thompson is now 9-1-1 in his last 11 games and has allowed one goal or less in six consecutive starts. The netminder leads the ECHL with a 1.95 goals-against average and a save percentage of 0.936.
Forwards Mark Cooper and Max Novak each had a goal and an assist, while defenseman Tom Parisi picked up two helpers in the victory.
South Carolina took a 1-0 lead at 8:11 of the first when Parisi connected with Jonathan Charbonneau on a one-time blast that blew by the blocker of goaltender Ken Appleby. Forward Matthew Weis had the second assist on Charbonneau’s sixth tally of the season.
Cooper pushed the advantage to 2-0 just 1:31 later at 9:40 on a wrist shot from the right circle from Parisi and Andrew Cherniwchan.
At 7:40 of the second, defenseman Tariq Hammond beat Appleby on a wraparound to make it 3-0 with assists from Novak and Cooper.
Florida got on the board for the only time at 17:10 of the middle period when a puck deflected off Joe Pendenza past Thompson to cut the lead to 3-1.
The SC backstop was at his best in the third period, making a total of 23 saves to keep the Everblades off the board and negate any chance of a late comeback.
Novak iced the win with an unassisted empty-net strike at 18:25, his ninth goal of the year.
Charbonneau’s tally was the lone man-advantage goal of the night, with SC finishing 1-for-3 on the power play while holding Florida 0-for-3. The Everblades finished with a shots-on-goal advantage of 42-26, while Appleby took the loss after stopping 22 shots.
NEXT GAMESouth Carolina finishes their weekend 3-in-3 on Sunday afternoon against Greenville at 3 p.m. at the Bon Secours Arena. The Stingrays return home to the North Charleston Coliseum on Friday night for a matchup against the Jacksonville Icemen at 7:05 p.m.
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