Flyers boss pleased with weekends work
Fife Flyers put in their 2 most convincing back-to-back performances of the season at the weekend despite falling short on both occasions. Saturday evening saw rivals Dundee Stars visit Fife Ice Arena in what was the first competitive game between the 2 sides since Fife’s acceptance to the Rapid Solicitors Elite Ice Hockey League. The game saw Fife run Dundee right to the last seconds but went down 3-2.
Flyers were missing 2 key personnel due to injuries, Willie Nicolson still recovering from concussion from the hit he received against Hull Stingrays, as well as British forward Iain Bowie.
Dundee opened the scoring in the 2nd period with their first goal coming at 9:36 on the powerplay and they extended their lead in the 3rd after 2:53 when Dan Ceman capitalised. Jarrett Konkle grabbed his 2nd goal of the game 19 seconds later to make it 3-0.
Fife coach Todd Dutiaume was determined not to let his players heads go down and urged the players not to get despondent. “We were in the game right from the beginning and I was urging the players not to get anxious. We weren’t having much luck in front of their net but we needed to just keep the pressure on and we knew we would get a break.”
That break eventually came to Matt Cohen who found himself at the point and scored at 17:23 in the 3rd period to get Fife’s first goal of the evening on the powerplay. Flyers then pulled netminder Garrett Zemlak at 18:11 and were rewarded for their dominant pressure with the 2nd goal coming at 18:37 from Mike Hamilton. Flyers could not get the elusive 3rd goal that would have taken the game to 3-3.
Sunday evening saw the team travel to Nottingham Panthers, the highest scoring team in the league, and came away with a point after holding the Panthers to a 2-2 tie after 3 periods and overtime before losing 3-2 after penalty shots. Netminder Garrett Zemlak faced 76 shots in that game.
“Goalies don’t tend to ever come up against that number of shots in one game throughout their whole career. We knew early on though that Garrett was going to have one of those nights after he had made some fine saves early on. Hopefully we won’t have to work him that hard again for quite some time.”
Garrett Zemlak walked off the ice to a standing ovation from both sets of fans at the Nottingham National Ice Arena and many fans have praised the performance Garrett put in on Sunday. “We were all shell-shocked at the performance he put in, but we know what he is capable of and we didn’t have any doubt in our netminder’s ability. It would have been great to have come out of the game only having faced 11 shots, but on the flip side it is great to know we have a guy here who is more than capable of facing 40-50 shots on a regular basis and put in that sort of performance.” Dutiaume confirmed.
Dutiaume has also confirmed that he has identified 2 targets he would like to bring in to the team. “I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but having new guys in is unlikely for this weekend. We have identified a couple of options and are pursuing those at the moment, we will have to wait and see how that turns out.”
Dutiaume also confirmed that he would not reject the chance to bring in some experienced British players to help with the Flyers development. “I will always keep an open book but I want to be careful. We have guys here already who are on a development plan and these are guys that we aren’t going to just discard because someone else might turn up. If there is a player that is right for us then we will never turn them down, neither would I turn away a CV.
“We have a good bunch of local guys here who are committed to what we are trying to build here. Mark Fowley hasn’t had a ton of ice time but he was thrown in at the deep end the other night and got his most regular shifts he has had all season. Mark is a great professional who has shown nothing but hard work and dedication to this team and he is biding his time at the moment and is ready to grab his chance with both hands.
“Kris Philips is another guy in that same mould. Kris has a great attitude and isn’t getting much ice time at the moment either. I spoke with him at the weekend and explained that he wouldn’t see ice time on Sunday at Nottingham but he still wanted to come down and be part of the team. We are strong in the wingers so Kris is also biding his time, but we will surely have some more injuries and Kris is waiting to grab his chance.” Dutiaume confirmed
An area that Dutiaume has acknowledged that still needs to improve is his side’s powerplay unit. “We are working hard on our powerplay in training but at the moment it is just not transferring in to actual games. There is a lot of pressure on our powerplay unit, because at the moment we only really have the 1 unit, compared to other teams who have the 2. We have had a few 5 on 3 powerplays in our favour and we should be creating more opportunities to score on them.”
The weekend also saw Flyers not running with a bench coach, as Steven Lynch was absent for both games. Steven Lynch had other arrangements which head coach Todd Dutiaume was aware of for some time. “I was well aware in advanced that Steven had something on which would mean that he was unable to be behind the bench for us at the weekend. It was a good opportunity for Matt [Siddall] and myself to see could control the bench.”
Fife Flyers return to the ice this Sunday when Nottingham Panthers visit Fife Ice Arena, face-off 6:30pm and then again on Tuesday 15th when Hull Stingrays return, face-off 7:30pm.
