After two periods, the Twin City Thunder had put up 26 shots but nothing to show for it. In the third period, they fired 10 shots and four found the back of the net in a 4-3 victory in a National Collegiate Development Conference game over the Boston Advantage at the Advent Health Center Ice Rink in the Wesley Chapel, Florida Tuesday morning.

The third period saw Thunder players driving to the net and making Advantage goalie Connor Bradford’s (26 saves) job more difficult.

“We took a lot of shots in (Bradford’s) glove and he made a lot of saves,” Thunder NCDC coach Dan Hodge said. “When you put the puck in his glove, he’s a good goalie. In the third period, we started to shoot off his body, going hard to the net and collecting rebounds.”

All four lines scored a goal. The chemistry is finally coming together during the games.

“Coming down here, we didn’t have a lot of time to grow as a group through game play,” Hodge said. “We are learning on the fly right now.”

With the Thunder down 1-0 after 40 minutes, Danny Klatt scored on the power play for his first goal of the season just past the two-minute mark of the third period.

Twin City then scored two goals 14 seconds apart, starting with Gabe Potyk scoring his 10th goal of the season and Noah Furman picking up the assist. Nick Rashkovsky scored at the 5:48 mark, with Tyler Fox and Gabe Malek notching assists.

Alex Rivet stretched the Thunder’s lead to 4-1 with just under nine minutes remaining in the game.

The Advantage made one last push as Dante Moretti scored twice on back-to-back shifts to cut the deficit to 4-3. Ryan Kuzmich had assists on both goals. The second goal was a power-play tally.

The Thunder were able to hang on for the win after giving up leads in their last two regular-season games to the Junior Bruins and New Hampshire Junior Monarchs.

“Learning to play with the lead and getting the win is the important thing to give us confidence heading into tomorrow,” Hodge said. “Another early (game) tomorrow. Our guys played hard and the last time we played (the Advantage) in Auburn, they said some things to our guys and made some comments after the game and we remembered that. Our guys wanted to play hard today and they did a good job.”

Boston was 1-for-2 on the man advantage, while the Thunder were 1-for-3.

Chance Heaphy scored in the middle of the second period to give the Advantage a 1-0 lead.

Devon Bobak made 16 saves in the victory.

The Thunder return to the ice Wednesday morning against the Jersey Hitmen.

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