Peter Russell hailed his ‘brilliant’ Great Britain players after they earned a second World Championship ice hockey victory in Budapest.
GB won 5-3 against Poland and Russell said: “This was another brilliant performance from the guys.
“Sure, we did not have it all our own way and we were a bit sloppy in the second period.
“But they come back so hard and found a way to win.
“I am so proud of this squad once again and every single one of them gave it everything they had.”
Britain outshot the Poles 39-34 and earned their second group win in three matches played so far.
Their next fixture is against Italy on Friday.
GB are competing in Division One for the first time in five years after winning promotion in Belfast a year ago.
Poland’s head coach is former New York Islanders and Buffalo Sabres NHL head coach Ted Nolan and he said: “A hockey game takes three periods and you cannot just play parts of it. That’s what we did.
“GB started really well and they took it to us in the last ten minutes when it was urgency for us.
“Give Britain credit, they deserved to win and we got what we deserved.”
Welshman Jonathan Phillips clinched victory for GB with an empty net goal after 59 minutes 29 seconds. The Cardiff-born former Devils forward, who now plays for Sheffield Steelers, is one of three Welsh players in the team, along with Matthew Myers and Ben Davies.
Ben O’Connor scored his second goal of the tournament in his 50th GB appearance, while Devils D-man Mark Richardson added an assist after being awarded his 75th cap.
Britain had most of the early pressure and after Richardson put a backhand shot just wide of the right-hand post, Brett Perlini edged GB ahead.
The Nottingham Panthers forward cleverly tipped in Richardson’s shot from the blueline at three minutes two seconds for his second goal of the tournament.
Poland drew level on the powerplay when a feed from behind the net by Aron Chmielewski set up Pawel Dronia for a one-timer from the left circle (12-21).
But GB went ahead on the powerplay with the period coming to a close when Colin Shields converted Robert Farmer’s pass for his 42nd international goal (18-37).
Poland equalised for a second time – just as a powerplay come to an end – through Damian Kapica’s one-timer from the right circle (23:31) and took the lead through Krzysztof Zapala (29-42).
Cardiff Devils goalie Bowns produced a stunning save to deny Krystian Dziubinski as he slid from left to right and then shut the door to deny Dronia on a penalty shot (38-23) after Richardson was harshly penalised. Those two saves were huge in turning the match momentum GB’s way.
They scored three third period goals to earn the victory.
Robert Dowd’s pinpoint pass fed Brendan Brooks and he fired low past American-born netminder John Murray (44-56) and Britain went ahead during a five-v-three powerplay less than two minutes later.
It was O’Connor who scored with a blast from the top of the right circle only 14 seconds after being struck in the face by a stick, an incident which led to the 5v3.
That went in at 46-40 and Phillips completed the scoreline after Poland had pulled Murray in favour of an extra skater.
“I’ll take a stick in the face any day if it leads to the game winning goal,” said O’Connor. “You have to do it to win and everybody did it today, blocking shots, doing the little things.
“In the second period we got away from our game plan. We dominated the first and in the second period we tried to go a bit more individual and it didn’t work.
“There were pucks turned over on the bluelines and Poland are a good team. They were killing us. We took silly penalties.
“In the third we went back to doing the things we are good at, getting the pucks deep, going to work, finishing the hits and it showed.
“Coming back from 3-2 down to win shows good character in a tournament like this.”
There is no World Championship action for GB tomorrow, but they return to action on Friday when they face Italy at (7.30pm European time, 6.30pm UK time).
Italy inflicted a first defeat of the week on Kazakhstan, emerging 3-0 winners.
“The key to our success was team spirit and focus,” said Italy’s coach Clayton Beddoes. “It didn’t have a lot to do with coaching, but how the players were smart when they had the puck and if they didn’t have the puck.
“Kazakhstan are a good, well coached team and from our side it was just a matter of working together,”
Italy outshot Kazakhstan 40-29 and netminder Andreas Bernard earned a shutout.
Group results so far and fixtures:
Wednesday, April 25
Italy 3, Kazakhstan 0
Great Britain 5, Poland 3
Slovenia 4, Hungary 1
Tuesday, April 24
Kazakhstan 6, Great Britain 1
Monday, April 23
Slovenia 2, Poland 4
Italy 2, Hungary 3
Sunday, April 22
Great Britain 3, Slovenia 1
Hungary 0, Kazakhstan 3
Poland 1, Italy 3
Schedule
(All times are BST)
Thursday, 26 April
Poland v Hungary (6pm)
Friday, 27 April
Kazakhstan v Slovenia (3pm)
Italy v Great Britain (6.30pm)
Saturday, 28 April
Kazakhstan v Poland (11.30am)
Slovenia v Italy (3pm)
Hungary v Great Britain (6.30pm)