By Thomas Pope, Fayetteville Observer

A season-best Crown Coliseum crowd of 5,226 couldn’t have asked for more out of the Fayetteville FireAntz on Saturday night.

With two very odd scoring plays in the third period, the FireAntz rallied to beat Huntsville 4-3 and claim the No. 2 seed for the Southern Professional Hockey League playoffs. The Antz open the best-of-3 first round Tuesday at 7 p.m. against Pensacola, which lost its regular-season finale Saturday night in Knoxville.

“The guys stuck with it and played hard — that was playoff hockey,” said coach Jeff Bes, whose team fell to Huntsville in overtime Friday night. “It was exciting, grinding, we didn’t get down, we just kept battling. The response we got tonight was phenomenal. It’s a good steppingstone leading into Tuesday’s game.”

The FireAntz (36-17-3, 75 points) couldn’t have won on two more oddball goals.

Just 44 seconds into the third period, a shot bounced high in the air off of Huntsville’s starting goaltender, Adam Courchaine. When it descended, it struck Fayetteville’s Jake Hauswirth in the shoulder and ricocheted past Courchaine to tie the game.

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