Vancouver Giants picked up their 30th win of the season on Saturday night, March 8, dominating the Kamloops Blazers 5-1 at the Sandman Centre.

Giants remain two points back of Portland for fifth place in the Western Conference, but they are now just one point behind Tri-City for sixth. Each of the three teams has six games remaining.

G-men got two goals from Ty Halaburda and 33 saves from Burke Hood.

In addition to Halaburda's 25th and 26th goals of the season, Jaden Lipinski (15th), Connor Levis (22nd) and Cameron Schmidt (35th) also scored. Meanwhile Hood now holds a .947 save percentage in his last four starts.

Oren Shtrom broke Hood's shutout bid with 1:12 remaining in the game, providing the only Blazers goal of the evening.

Giants associate coach Adam Maglio saw a lot of positives. 

"I liked how we got better as the game went along," Maglio commented.

"You could tell in the start maybe things weren't going our way, but we didn't waver. We just stuck to the plan and got better each period.

"We were just playing faster. We were quicker with the puck. We went back to a really good forecheck game. I just thought guys were committed to putting pucks low when there weren't plays, when we didn't have odd-man rushes, and we got a lot of pucks back off the forecheck, created some good chances low to high." 

Blazers had the early pressure but some saves from Hood and a big penalty kill kept the score deadlocked 0-0 through the first half of the period.

With just under seven minutes remaining, the Giants scored the game's first goal with the man advantage, after Schmidt threw a puck to the net form the right circle that went off Halaburda and in.

Just 25 seconds later, the Giants made it 2-0 after Lipinski tucked home a loose puck at the side of the net.

The second period saw Kamloops fight back and get some good looks, but the score remained 2-0 after they hit a couple cross bars.

With under five minutes remaining in the second, Schmidt fed Levis a pass from behind the net to the left circle, which Levis quickly snapped on net for the all important third goal. It was Levis' 98th career goal and his seventh against his former team in seven games this season.

At the 6:59 mark of the third period, Schmidt would break an 11-game goalless drought when he came out from the net and beat Dylan Ernst with a spin-o-rama shot for his 35th of the season.

Halaburda extended the Giants lead to 5-0 just past the halfway mark of the third period after a Blazers turnover in their own zone led to a loose puck in the slot, which Halaburda stepped into after coming off the bench.

With 72 seconds left in the hockey game, Shtrom would score on a 2-on-1 shorthanded to make the final score 5-1.

Hood, with 33 saves on 34 shots, was first star of the game, Halaburda was second star.

Next, Giants host the Prince George Cougars Sunday, March 9 at 91原创 Events Centre at 4 p.m.