The autopsy of the weekends humiliating performance has begun, and it doesn’t take much investigation to find out what went wrong. After a gutsy performance against Cardiff Devils which saw another loss, albeit a more creditable 4-2 loss, Flyers were the team no-one wanted to be when they were on the end of Edinburgh Capitals first win in 39 attempts losing 8-3 on Sunday evening at Murrayfield Ice Rink in their Challenge Cup match.
Player/coach Todd Dutiaume was not holding back about the performance on Sunday evening. “Some of the guys need to take a long hard look in the mirror!” Dutiaume exclaimed.
“I was semi-pleased with the performance we put out on Saturday night against the [Cardiff] Devils. It was an entertaining game and I felt The Devils were there for the taking, but yet again a silly penalty has cost us the game.With just over 2 minutes to go, and whilst we were on top, we take yet another silly penalty that all but killed our chances to take anything from the game.”
Fife Flyers are the 5th highest penalised team in the league with 168 penalty minutes accrued in 7 league games with only Belfast; Sheffield; Nottingham and Hull having more penalty minutes, but all having played more games.
“We are still taking un-necessary penalties, our guys are still losing players they are marking and when getting caught out, to compensate they are hooking, tripping or slashing to try and make up for it. I am sure if you look at the stats, we will have the worst Penalty Killing unit in the league and that is partly down to the pure volume of silly penalties we are taking.”
Flyers return to the ice in Elite Ice Hockey League action on Saturday night with a resurgent Capitals team, fresh from ending their 39 game losing run, the visitors to Fife Ice Arena, and Dutiaume, expects the team to respond in the only way they can.
“The guys had better pull up their socks! In hockey, everyone plays with niggles, some of the guys just have to suck up and get on with it, this is a physical sport. Long term injuries of course, are a different story, and we will not rush players back before they are fully fit.”
Dutiaume was of course referring to the injuries of defenceman Tommy Muir who is expected to be out “long-term” with a wrist injury and the injury to netminder Garrett Zemlak who is still feeling the effects of the challenge during the game with Belfast Giants on October 1st. The Flyers injury list continues to grow, with Kyle Horne who has sustained a knee injury now also out, and Dutiaume is waiting to hear the prognosis of that injury before developing a rehab programme for him.
Dutiame also states, “One of the biggest challenges we had is that every one of last years team, every player, wanted to play so badly, as playing for Fife is one of the ultimate places to play your hockey. For the past 5 years, call it what you want – languishing in the lower leagues; down in the doldrums; the guys who pulled on the Flyers jersey were able to say they played for Fife Flyers. It seems however, that some of the players still want be able to say that, but are not willing to put in the hard work and make the changes that are necessary, and that are required to still be able to say they play for Fife.”
So will this step up the search for new players to be brought in? “I have always wanted to bring in more guys to this team, but some people seem to think that bringing in an import just for the sake of it will be a saving grace, that will not be the case. As long as the players on this team want to play, that is what matters. We need to show consistent and hard working hockey first and foremost, but yes I would like to bring in 1 or 2 more guys.” Dutiaume confirmed.
Regarding the Flyers captaincy, Jamie Wilson still remains the captain of Fife Flyers, there appeared to be an error on Sunday evening that contradicted this.
Fife Flyers return to the ice at Fife Ice Arena this Saturday, 7:15pm face-off, when they look to take revenge on the Edinburgh Capitals.
