Fife Flyers look for consistency as they get ready to battle in Belfast

After watching his team suffer an 8-2 defeat at Sheffield Steelers last weekend, he said there was “no excuse” for the collapse except a lack of fight from the players.

“Clearly we’ve demonstrated over the last three weeks with the quality of opposition we’ve played, that we’re more than capable of skating with anybody in the league,” he said.

“But our issue that we’re dealing with is that we can’t maintain that consistently.

“It’s a little bit of a collective thing. We’ve had an inconsistency out of the line up.

“If you don’t have everybody skating then there are holes in your line up and those are exploited very quickly, then that appears as everybody isn’t doing everything.

“We’ve been fighting for our lives over these past few weeks and not to go out and play as if everything was on the line is terribly disappointing.

“I was very down about the result. It’s always a very difficult place to play, but there was no excuse for that.

“We came out and we started fantastically, then we found ourselves in a position that have done many times this season – 100 per cent we took our foot off the gas.

“Some guys completely stopped skating and if you give Sheffield an opportunity to get rolling, especially in that building, you can see the kind of result you’ll be looking at.

“It’s an issue we’ve been dealing with for the entire season.”

Despite the nature of the defeat, Dutes says there were some unlikely positives to take.

“Special teams were absolutely fantastic and that is something that has been strengthening over the last month or so.

“Our powerplay looked extremely strong and our kill has been absolutely stalwart lately.”

With just six games remaining Flyers sit bottom of the table, four points behind Dundee Stars who have two games in hand.

If that wasn’t tough enough, four of Fife’s matches are away from home with three of them at title-chasing Belfast Giants.

Admitting that the task ahead of them is “daunting” Dutiaume says he is determined to fight for every point until the end of the season.

“There are are a number of things that have to fall into place,” he said.

“The results didn’t go our way at the weekend, but I’ve never been one to rely on other teams for favours.

“We’ll probably need favours the rest of the way out as well as finding a level of consistency over the next six games that has really eluded us for the majority of the season.

“My position is, no matter where you find yourselves in the league standings, you play until the end of the season. You have a contract, you come to work and you work hard to finish off the season as strongly as you can.”

The first of the three matches with Belfast comes tomorrow (Friday) in Flyers only game this weekend.

“It’s another tough building to go to with a long day of travel but we know what to expect,” he said.

“They’re in the midst of play-off jockeying themselves and will be looking to finish as high up the table as they can so we’re going to have to earn everything we come out with”.