Fife Flyers bid to break Sheffield Steelers' perfect road record

The teams meet at Fife Ice Arena on Saturday with the return game in Sheffield on Sunday. and Flyers go into the matches looking to keep picking up points in their pursuit of a play-off place.

The two points secured from two overtime losses to Guildford Flames and Coventry Blaze last weekend were enough to push them up to ninth spot, and also cut the gap on eighth placed Manchester Storm to just three points. It could have been a four-point weekend but for some errors which saw the club concede costly goals - a point the coach went over with his team as he took them through videos of the games in training this week.

“We have to break things down and try to minimise the mistakes,” he said. “But we’ve taken two points in each of the last two weekends - I’d like the Nottingham game back - and we have to keep going. You don’t chop a tree down with one swing of the axe - you keep chipping away.”

Coolen saw defenceman Stephen Desrocher return to training this week, although he may be at least one more week away from a return to the line-up after sustaining a broken finger against Cardiff Devils in mid December.

Team captain Jonas Emmerdahl continues his rehab work from injury, and that could mean another shift on the blue line for Vitalijs Pavlovs. Netminder Shane Owen is also back in full training, but the coach will wait on an update later this week before making any final decision on a return to the bench. He is also hoping recent signing Kevin Wehrs is back to 100% after struggling with illness through last weekend’s games

“Kevin played two games straight off the plane and then last weekend was ill and had little energy - we have not seen the best of him yet,” he said. “Pavlovs is a big body to put back on defence, but it does hurt our offensive firepower. He did a great job at the weekend when we were down to four defencemen. He came here and started as first line centre, but had played some defence before, so when I asked him to drop back he smiled and said okay. That’s the kind of guy you want on your team.”

Coolen remains confident that, fully healthy, his side will make inroads in the play-off run-in: “We have plenty of games left. This weekend will be tough but we will see how it goes. “