HK Nitra beat HC Pilsen 2-1 on home ice to tie Group J into a three-way tie with three points each. Read more in Gamecentre. 

In their sixth CHL game, dating back to last season, HK Nitra beat HC Pilsen 2-1 at home to earn their first victory in the European competition. 

“You can't win 'em all,” sighed Pilsen defeneman Peter Ceresak. “We traveled here six hours by bus and but we can't make excuses for it. Simply, we have to play well even after a difficult journey. The atmosphere here in Nitra was brilliant.” 

A Slovak who has played in Nitra before, Ceresnak said, “I told my teammates before the game that there would be a lot of fans here and it would be loud.”

The Nitra fans were inded loud and they were ready for a big game against their former Czechoslovakian rivals. Both teams were ready, as well, with plenty of back-and-forth action early. Nitra opened the scoring in the 12th minute when Marek Slovak sent Cramo Top Scorer Judd Blackwater in all alone and he made no mistake with the backhander to the glove side of Marek Machovsky. 

Pilsen tied the score early in the second on an excellent individual effort from Ondrej Kratena, beating a Nitra defender wide and cutting in front to stuff the puck past Michal Valent. For the rest of the middle frame, however, Valent was unbeatable as Pilsen fired 14 more shots at him and Nitra killed off three straight penalties. Overall, the Nitra keeper stopped 27 of 28 shots.

Nitra were a lot more defensively responsible in the third and they regained the lead on the power play with Jameson Milam cutting in from the point, taking a pass from Blackwater and firing a perfect shot over the shoulder of Machovsky. After that, the Nitra fans cheered away the minutes as their team held off late Pilsen pressure to win and tie-up Group J at three points apiece.

Nitra head coach Andrej Kmec was pleased with his team's effort. "Our active play helped us to get our first victory. Pilsen is a team with a really good power play so this was probably the key moment – that we scored a power-play goal whereas they didn't."

On the other side, Pilsen head coach Michal Straka was far less than pleased. "Our performance was really bad today. It was a deserved win for the home team today. We weren't able to create scoring chances. We have to improve our positional play and be sharper with our passing." 

Nitra goalie Valent summed up, “I'm very glad we won. It was an excellent game with a perfect finish for us. We knew that Pilsen had already played one game, so we were really active from the start of the game. I am glad we achieved this historic win for Nitra in the CHL. Personally, I felt excellent on the ice and enjoyed the game. With regards to advancing, we are going game by game. We have a hard game in Pilsen coming up and we have to concentrate on that.”