- Braeden Shaw: 3 goals, 2 assists for Innsbruck
- Evan Buitenhaus: 40 saves, leads CHL with 170
- Patrick Bjorkstrand: 2 goals, 5 shots for Aalborg
On the Champions Hockey League Playoff boundary, HC Innsbruck got three points they desperately needed with a 6-4 win over the Aalborg Pirates, although it wasn’t easy.
Innsbruck looked like they might run away with this game in the first period when they built up a 2-0 lead, with both goals scored by Braeden Shaw, who would finish the game with an astonishing five points.
Shaw opened the scoring just shy of the four-minute mark when he put a nice re-direct on Danish defenceman Anders Krogsgaard’s slap pass from the point. Then in the 15th minute, it was Gordon Green finding Shaw in the slot. This time he turned and fired a wrister that beat George Sørensen glove side.
Shaw very nearly completed a natural hattrick on a late-period powerplay but Sørensen made a big save to keep his team in it. That became important because the Pirates played much better in the second period, outscoring Innsbruck 2-1.
Danish national team forward Patrick Bjorkstrand got Aalborg on the board in the 28th minute, taking a pass from Tommy Giroux and picking the far top corner past Evan Buitenhaus.
Innsbruck’s two-goal lead was restored off the rush, with Green one-timing a feed from Corey Mackin and Shaw recording his third point of the game. But on a powerplay late in the second period, Aalborg closed the gap again when Jeppe Jul Korsgaard was first on the puck after an attacking-zone faceoff and fired it in.
Early in the third period, Shaw completed his hattrick on the powerplay. After his initial shot was blocked, he got the puck back and backanded it past both the defenceman and goalie.
The Pirates refused to surrender, however, and fought their way back to within one with 10:58 to play when Tobias Ladehoff tapped in a centring feed from Korsgaard into an unguarded Innsbruck net.
The visitors from western Austria took firm control of the game when goals from Mackin and Kevin Roy gave them a three-goal lead for the first time. Bjorkstrand’s second of the game with 3:25 to go brought Aalborg within two again, but that’s as close as they would come.