Fife Flyers: one game, one huge goal & 462-mile road trip to grab play-off place

The team make the long journey to the spectrum Arena in Guildford for a last day, win or bust match against Guildford Flames.

If they win, they grab the eighth and last qualification spot and will go head to head with newly crowned league champions, Belfast Giants, next weekend.

If they lose, the curtain falls on their 2022-23 campaign.

Flyers have shown down the years they like to do things the hard way, and going to the wire with absolutely no safety net is as tough as it can get.

They’ve not beaten Flames all season, despite matching up well in a couple of games, and perfect four-point weekends have ben ultra rare throughout this campaign.

But it’s that, or summer beckons.

The optics surrounding this game only settled late last night.

Flyers’ 4-0 shut out of Dundee Stars aligned with Glasgow Clan losing by one goal in Sheffield to put the play-off race back in their own hands.

They could have been going to Guildford to take on a Flames side shooting for the league crown, but that dream also died last night as Belfast Giants swept Paul Dixon’s impressive side 6-1 to clinch a third straight EIHL crown.

Flyers and Flames both face long trips to the Spectrum for today’s game, and the hosts have secured second place - how they lace up and approach the game may be a factor.

Will there be a hangover from seeing the title taken from their grasp after leading from the front for so long this season?Will they opt to conserve energy for the players?Or will they want to get their Belfast frustrations out of their system tonight?

For Jeff Hutchins, Flyers’ associate coach, it’s clear: “Regardless of how they come out after losing title, we have to be ready to grind out a win.”

Flyers need to get the biggest games of the season out of every player.

A 60-minute game has been their achilles’ heel throughout the campaign, but the buzz which surrounded the team as it left the ice last night on the back of a shut out has to carry all the way down the motorway.

Shane Owen built a brick wall around his net to shut out Stars’ forwards, while there were big games from Kamerin Nault, who was inventive throughout, and Brayden Sherbinin set the tempo from the blue line from the puck drop.

While things were pretty loose in a scrappy game, Fife found a groove and, importantly, buried their chances at key times, with Mikael Johansson delivering a double to take his tally to nine for the season, He needs to take that into double figures tonight.

Flyers simply have to deliver enough offensive firepower to get the better of a Flames’ team that has impressed throughout this campaign.

“It's all about confidence and this win gives us that.” said Jeff Hutchins, associate coach. “It was good to get the first goal - there was a huge sense of relief when it dropped and to follow up quickly gave them confidence to go on.

“This is a great opportunity for us - we have control back. We now have to go and play 60 minutes.”

Victory over Stars was just Flyers’ 12th of this league campaign and only their second in their last 14 games - but it set the scene for a Sunday showdown with everything in the line.

The club has been here before many times and delivered.

It needs to do it one more time.