Fife Flyers’ ‘horrendous’ puck management at heart of tough road loss
Fife Flyers new-look team will have to learn quickly how to adapt to playing on tight ice pads such as Manchester Storm where they went down 6-1 on Sunday.
Jamie Russell, head coach, described their puck management as “horrendous” and put the loss on the opening day of a new EIHL league season down to too many mistakes.
“We did a lot of things to beat ourselves,” he said, “It’s a small rink so things happen quickly and you don;t have time and space, but constantly turned over the puck on the blue line.”
Storm, of course, are masters of their own rink in Altrincham, and the win completed four point weekend for them after a sound thrashing of Nottingham Panthers in the Challenge Cup.
They took a relatively uneventful first period 2-0 with both goals coming late in the session.
Before that, their best chance came when a flipped puck out of the zone saw Gilmour knock it down out of mid-air to put himself on a breakaway, although he eventually over-handled and couldn’t get the backhand shot away.
The breakthrough came with two goals in quick succession. Brandon Cutler ripped one home from the faceoff dot with just under a minute left, before Gilmour scored on an almost identical play some 20 seconds later.
The second period followed a similar pattern, as Storm continued their theme of scoring in bunches. This time, it was Gilmour who started things off rather than finishing them, putting home his second of the game after a bouncing puck landed perfectly on his stick in the crease. JD Dudek followed with an excellent wraparound on Shane Owen at 28:18 to make it 4-0.
After Brandon Cutler and Ian Scheid dropped the gloves, it was the visitors who got the next goal - Garet Hunt tapping in at the back post at 32:24 to get his side on the board.
Two per period was the trend for Storm, and that continued in the third. Cutler converted on the powerplay to make it 5-1 at 47:41, before Kaleb Ergang added a sixth with just over seven minutes remaining to the delight of the 1867-strong crowd.