Fife Flyers: an injury hit season from the very start

Post lockdown, Fife Flyers have slipped from mid table to the basement, the wins have dwindled and, worryingly, the fans have continued to drift away.

Season 2022-23 held out the promise of reversing the optics with a new-look, more experienced roster, but it failed to ignite, leaving the fan base frustrated. It’s a view shared in the coaches’ office.Flyers posted just 12 wins - a mere six on home ice - across 54 EIHL games, scored fewer goals than anyone else, and while the Challenge Cup final was a highlight, it was another season of what should have been.

While the club hit its goal in the cup, it couldn’t land a play-off slot after failing to deliver when the matter was entirely in its own hands, and it is safe to say the expectations of the fan base weren’t met.

Looking back on the bones of a season which yielded a poor ninth spot - the third season running Fife have finished in the bottom two - Todd Dutiaume, head coach, said: “When you see a team playing physical and competitive right off the bat, that’s the team we have to be on a nightly basis - do that and we will be fine - but it never happened.“We were healthy enough plenty of times to get that consistent edge, but the competitiveness and hard nosedness weren’t there.”

Dutiaume is adamant he doesn’t want the issue of injuries to come over as an excuse - but the problem hung over the dressing-room for much of the first half of the season, blighting hopes of progress.

Straight off the bat, Flyers lost giant defenceman Simon Fernholm who was clearly far from recovered from his history of concussion. The 2012 NHL draft from Sweden managed just two games and looked fragile in the thick of the action.

“We were not given all the facts about his position,” said Dutiaume. “He wanted to come back after dealing with significant concussion issues, but it was apparent he was not ready. That hurt us.”

Jonas Emmerdahl then missed a month with a broken thumb, and key forward Mikael Johansson was absent for most of the Challenge Cup through injury.

“We were short straight off the bat. Guys were overplayed,” said Dutiaume. “They were overwhelmed by the number of minutes they were asked to log. You can’t skate for 30 minutes every night - a one-off, maybe, but not for weeks straight. It’s too much.”

Pre-season there was a sense of optimism after the worryingly inexperienced team of 2021-22 toiled so badly through a painful season.

Seasoned pros in the shape of Janne Kivilati, Zack Phillips and Janne Lakkonen were recruited, a new defence built, and goals set.

Said Dutiaume: “The biggest conscious decision we made was to get back to where we had success - by keeping the core of the team. We were making play-offs, hitting mid table and the final four when we had guys like Schaber, Finnuci and Bloods, backed by quality netminders. That’s where you find success.

“We wanted to bring in more experience. Last season we brought in Chris Lawrence and he solidified a young group and gave it some leadership.”

But the team’s achilles heel remained a lack of firepower. Only four players hit double figures when it came to goals, with a number of key skaters delivering low numbers.

Some of the older legs couldn’t keep going, some were hampered by injury and never got fully into their stride.

“We were strong from the beginning of the season at the back end - netminder and defence, They were the highlight of the season for me,” said Dutiaume. “The goals against over the season showed the tremendous amount of pressure they were under because we didn’t generate enough offensive firepower.

“We were blown out a couple of times, and that happens when we were averaging only around two goal a game. If the opposition got that third goal, we knew statistically we were not going to get that production to come back, and heads went down.”

One man may not make a team, but the loss of Shawn Cameron to a season-ending injury so early on was a game changer.

Dutiaume is adamant: “He would have scored 30 goals with his eyes shut in this league. No-one could live with his speed - put him in a line with the likes of Janne Laakkonen, get the puck to his stick, it’s in the net.”

Given the green light to carry extra skaters, Flyers added Liam Blackburn as a stop-gap, picked up Chris Gerrie from Dundee, then Liam MacDougall and Kamerin Nault. It’s fair to say of the quartet, Nault had the most impact - he is one many fans want to see back.

One name is missing from that roll-call - Anthony DeLuca, a player who could have ignited the team. The former Sheffield Steelers’ forward was bound for Kirkcaldy when everything changed and he ended up at Manchester where he netted some 53 points. Inject his 29-goal haul into Fife, and do the maths …

Dutiaume said: “Anthony wanted to come here and we wanted him. You take his production and transplant it into our team and our season looks very different.

“But it isn’t just about one player. In one goal games when you need someone to put the puck in the net, he delivers and other players light up.”

Flyers’ loss was Storm’s gain - he was their top points scorer, eclipsing Fife’s number one, Phillips’ total into the bargain.

So are recruitment and budget constraints at the heart of Fife’s issues? Dutiaume says no.

“It isn’t a budget thing - it’s finding the right players,” he said “It is a huge, league wide problem. Fife and Belfast never used to recruit in the same player pool, now every team is looking for exactly the same players.“Some teams can pay significantly more. We will never be a club that goes to the league maximum. That’s not our reality - that takes big city sponsorship.

“We were still carrying Shawn’s salary, so we had three extra players in effect. We had 17 skaters on the books.

“Out of any of the last three seasons, we dealt with nothing but consistent injury issues. We replaced bodies, carried extras and still could not stay healthy. We replaced, we tried to improve. We tried everything to stay away from playing short handed, but we were rarely healthy and at full strength.”

That scenario also hampered any thoughts of shipping any players out as part of the process of re-shaping the team for the second half of the campaign.

Perhaps, in hindsight, the opening weeks of the league campaign set the tone for the whole season.

“We got through the Challenge Cup and got mired in the league campaign. The opening night, Storm skated us off the ice, we lost at Coventry and then we played Guildford home and away over a weekend. It’s something we have done for years - we didn’t reckon on running into a steam train Flames’ side, so, after the opening weekends we were zero for four and in trouble.

“We showed glimpses but couldn’t bring it on a nightly basis.”“It was a historic season in that we reached the Challenge Cup final - and that was a significant accomplishment - but we missed the play-offs by one stinky point”