Dutiaume: Guildford away will be tougher

Flyers players were up early this morning to make the long eight-hour bus journey down to the Spectrum after defeating Guildford 6-3 at Fife Ice Arena last night.

Despite the scoreline it was a difficult match for Fife, who were outshot 26-35, but Dutiaume reckons his players face an even harder test tonight (face-off 6.00 p.m).

"It's going to be tougher," he said.

"Guildford are a team that are not going to go away, as you saw from the way they played tonight.

"We need to be on top of our game and produce an even stronger game than we did tonight.

"Both teams have to travel down tonight and tomorrow so the travel isn't really an advantage for anybody."

Flyers will certainly hope for a better start after having to come from behind last night with Guildford opening the scoring after just 23 seconds.

"We knew it was going to be a quick pace and it took us three minutes to adjust," Dutiaume said.

"I've been very complimentary of Guildford's style of play - they are a good skating team.

"We righted the ship very quickly, and Carlo (Finucci) came down and got the equaliser, which that calmed down the nerves and brought the building back to life.

"From then on, for the most part, we were pretty good.

"When we got away from the game-plan and guys tried to take on men in odd-man situations, instead of getting the puck deep and going to get it, we caused a bit of bother for ourselves.

"But we righted the ship in the third period, and we were better. It was a good scoreline for us tonight."