Nottingham Panthers suffered an agonising last-gasp 6-5 defeat in a thrilling topsy-turvy tussle against fellow high-flyers Coventry Blaze.

Panthers led through Brendan Cook, then trailed 3-1 heading into the final period only to tie the scores thanks to goals from Rumun Ndur and Johan Molin.

Cook's second goal of the evening and a 57th-minute effort from Marc Levers seemed to have guaranteed a home win.

But Blaze hit back and two late strikes stole an unlikely victory.

Sylvain Deschatelets and Erik Hjalmarsson did the damage for Blaze, scoring their second goals of the game in the 59th and 60th minute to all but end Nottingham's hopes of winning the Elite League title.

Ben O'Connor grabbed Blaze's other goal.

The result was incredibly harsh on Panthers who scored four goals in a pulsating final period to storm into a 5-4 lead with less than three minutes remaining.

Panthers coach Corey Neilson was distraught.

"I'm never going to be happy losing at home to a team I never, ever want to lose to," he told BBC Radio Nottingham.

"The guys know how much this game meant to me. This team prides itself on scoring goals and in the first two periods we didn't.

"We came out in the third and made some adjustments and started creating a lot and scored a lot of goals against a good team.

"But when you open up a little bit you leave yourself open at times and a good team like that will exploit it when they get the chance."

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