Fife Flyers: Tom Coolen on better puck management and changing his rotation plans

Fife Flyers have unveiled six players with several more to be announced in the coming days and weeks - a significant change from previous summers when signings tended to be rolled out in August. There are no prizes for completing your roster first, but the steady flow of names is important to keep the fan base engaged, and, ultimately, sell season tickets. In that respect, Flyers are on a roll right now.

There are four new players on the roster already and more will follow as head coach Tom Coolen sets about strengthening and improving his roster.

He was rinkside for some of the games at this month‘s World Championships, and is just back from a short break in Crete where daily calls and messages to players and agents continued, and will go on after he has landed back home in Canada for the summer.

“I’m working every day and getting a lot done,” he said “Last summer was extremely busy as I only had about six weeks to build a team and I was starting from scratch. My son was also working from home and had taken over the basement of our house, so I opened up my garage, set up my whiteboard, exercise bike and some tunes, and got to work! But I didn’t start until the middle of June so it is good to go ahead earlier.”

The planning process actually began months earlier as the team charged through a thrilling second half of the campaign.

Even before his return was publicly confirmed, Coolen had one eye on 2024-25 and mulling over the next steps Flyers needed to take to re-establish their EIHL competitive credentials after a few fallow seasons. Making the play-offs in what was a season of transition was the baseline from which the club wants to build.

“In the winter I put my wish list together and started to work through it,” said Coolen whose contacts across Europe and into the North American leagues will come into play this summer. “A lot of signings are down to timing. It’s like going fishing - some are ready to bite, others you have to be patient with. I could have signed 20 guys by now, but would they be the right 20 guys who would do the right jobs?”Coolen’s mantra is upgrade, upgrade and upgrade, and he’s doing that by starting at the back.

He wants a blue line to complement the quick thinking and movement of his forwards who tormented defences last season - players who more than pass muster when it comes to puck management - and if those two align then Fife could be a team watch next season.

“I’m trying to build a team that handles the puck better on the back end - and that is to take nothing away from the guys who did a heck of a job last season for us,” he said. “We need better control of the puck under pressure, and guys who can make the plays under pressure, and put pucks on sticks.”

Sean Giles has moved on and at least one other blue liner has put pen to paper for another club which his new coach has yet to announce. Defenceman Olivier LeBlanc is the first new piece in the jigsaw - a player Coolen describes as “a leader on and off the ice” - and his top slots are also being pencilled in, pending a final signature on a contract. As we spoke there were several deals just waiting on a call...

Coolen also plans to change how he handles his healthy scratches with more squad rotation rather than leaving out the same guy each weekend. American forward Casey Gilling found himself in the difficult position of being the healthy scratch most weeks throughout the season, unable to break in and take one of the regular slots from the key forwards and finding his ice time limited to warm ups before taking a seat in the stands.

Coolen accepts the player didn’t like it, but with a play-off spot on the line and little margin for error, changing what was a winning, hot team, simply wasn’t an option.

“I didn’t want to keep Casey out, but we had to win games,” he said. “It was as simple as that and you don’t change when you are winning, but next season I will rotate the players more.”

Key to that is having the squad depth necessary to cope with injuries and a schedule which can offer little chance of any decent recovery time - and finding the home-based players who can lace up and put in a regular shift is a challenge. It’s been Flyers’ achilles heel for a number of seasons as the gulf between the EIHL and SNL has grown, and a number of potential signings opting for the NIHL south of the border - the loss of defenceman Reece Cochrane, who had made the step up, to Bristol Pitbulls was a blow – and there is also no doubt the salaries being offered to some Brits are simply out of Flyers’ ballpark, further narrowing their options.

Coolen is certainly keen to open the door to Brodie Kay - a player who impressed him from his first training sessions in Kirkcaldy - whose rookie season was very much a watch and learn process with so many tight, one-goal hockey games making it difficult to throw him into the deep end. Finn Page also needs to stake a claim for ice time after failing to make a breakthrough last season.

There is work going on to make inroads into an issue Coolen inherited - one he cannot solve over night either. Even one experienced Brit would make a difference not just to the roster, but also change the dial in the debate over the lack of home based players at a club which has a long tradition of nurturing great young talent - and may then prompt others to follow. The league may be saturated with imports, but the depth isn’t 100% bought in. Squaring that circle is one of the key challenges this summer.