Fife Flyers head coach, Jamie Russell, thanked bosses for digging deep into their budget to fund air travel to Surrey tonight (SAT, 18.00) to face Guildford Flames, giving his men the best chance of being fresh for a crucial home clash on Sunday.
That’s when arch rivals, Dundee Stars, visit The Fife Ice Arena (17.00) in a key basement battle with Fife propping up the ten-strong table with Stars one place above. Both have 16 points ahead of Saturday’s match-ups.
First up for Russell, it is Flames, a club four places above them in the ten-strong Elite League and the English side have 29 points from 28 matches having scored on 82 occasions and let in 85 goals.
Fife have scored 68 goals, the third worst total in the league behind Dundee Stars and Glasgow Clan, and let in 134, the worst total in the league.
Fife last visited Guildford on December 6 when they lost 5-2 and Flames are currently on an unbeaten eight-game streak against the men from the Kingdom. What’s more, they have outscored Fife 45-13.
Flyers have also lost on their last four visits to The Spectrum and Flames have boosted their defence with the signing of 6ft 2in Canadian, Jonathan Racine.
The Kirkcaldy club will stay overnight near Guildford and fly back to Scotland on Sunday morning. That’s a far cry a far cry from the usual bus trip from Kirkcaldy to Surrey and back, a round trip of 894 miles which can take around 15 hours on a good run. For the record, Heathrow to Guildford is 24.5 miles and should take 37 minutes.
Russell believes jetting south will make a big difference and give his men the best chance of getting a result in front of home fans in a critical game against a side close to them in the table.
Captain Garet Hunt (pictured) continues to serve his six-game ban but word is that defenceman Jeremy Masella could be back after injury. He was injured in mid-November.
Looking back at last weekend, Fife scored seven goal in the confidence-boosting victory over high-flying Sheffield Steelers at The Auld Barn and three at league leaders Nottingham Panthers, that’s ten goals against two of the big shots in the league.
And that is a huge difference from early in the season when they struggled to score.
