Fife Flyers captain James Livingston: I would do anything for team to win

The 29-year-old Canadian was appointed team captain in November and admits he has taken the team’s recent slump personally.

With Flyers now firmly in a battle to secure a play-off spot, the former Cardiff Devil says he will do whatever it takes to help the club back to winning ways.

Sporting stitches and a black-eye following a dust-up with Glasgow Clan’s Linden Springer on Hogmanay, Livingston said: “I take everything pretty personally. 

“I overthink things a little too much probably but, for me, I’m totally invested.

“I would do anything for this team and the guys just to win. 

“Obviously, the fans have every right to be dissatisfied when you’re not bringing the performances they’ve come to expect, and I take that personally as well because this is my livelihood. This is what I want to be doing – playing for Fife, doing everything I can to be competitive and ultimately win the Championship.

“That’s why I came here in the first place. 

“Being named captain might add a little more but, at the end of the day, all I can do is what I can control, work as hard as I can and do what I can do to help the team.”

Livingston admitted nothing has changed for him since receiving the ‘C’ on his jersey.

“Dutes has recognised certain qualities that he thinks makes me deserving of  being captain but I’m just doing the same things I was doing before I was named,” he said.

“He and I have a very good relationship. We can talk about things, so I end up being a bit of a go-between sometimes.

“Other than that, I try to motivate and be pretty vocal.”

Livingston was able to take positives from the weekend defeats to Dundee Stars and Cardiff Devils but insists results are all that matter now.

“It’s always positive when you’re trending in the right direction. It’s just unfortunate that we’ve put ourselves in this position in the first place but we can definitely take some positives from last weekend, as much as we’re not satisfied with only getting one point,” he said.

“We sat down as a team and talked about a couple of things.

“We talked about where we wanted to go and things we needed to improve on a little bit. 

“We came to an understanding and I think that might have made a difference from that one game to the other.

“From here on, it’s probably going to come down to the last game probably (to reach the play-offs). It’s going to be a battle every night.

“In this league the way that it is, there are no easy games. At the same time, we’ve shown that we can compete with the best if we bring our ‘A’ games.

“At Cardiff, if one or two bounces had gone the other way, it could have been a different outcome. It would have been nice to take a point but, like I say, we’re taking the positives from that game.

“At the end of the day, we still need to be taking the points.

“It doesn’t matter how much potential you have if you don’t realise it. 

“We just need to be eliminating a couple of mistakes every game. Those are the things that keep biting us.

“As much as other teams have made mistakes that we haven’t capitalised on, it seems that when we make mistakes, it ends up in our net, unfortunately.

”Everyone’s got to be working at 100 per cent for us to have a chance, that’s the bottom line.

“From now, all games are huge. We’re not going to win them all but we need to show up every night and give ourselves a chance to win.”