Fife Flyers: Five things we learned from weekend losses to Guildford Flames

Flames double header:

Two games, two 5-3 losses - and both to a side that Fife need to be competing with, and beating, to underpin their hopes of bagging a play-off spot next March.

Flames have made a great start to the season, Fife not so much.

The old ‘it’s a marathon, not a sprint’ adage springs to mind, but Flyers need to recoup the four points dropped to Paul Dixon’s team to balance the ledgers.

Flyers certainly have the talent and experience and, at full strength, the depth to more than compete with Flames.

Right now, they need to find ways of winning hockey games.

Performance:

Big talking point rinkside this weekend - why is a 60-minute hockey game so elusive to Fife Flyers?

Saturday’s performance against Flames was simply not good enough, and the third period pushback cannot mask its shortcomings.

But fans have seen this movie before - and too often.

That feeling of deja vu has to be tackled and eradicated.

There is potential within this new look team, but it needs to deliver on the ice.

It’s early days and no-one is reaching for the panic button, but two zero-point weekends weren’t on the agenda, and there is the start of a gnawing worry that the optimism sparked by those early Challenge Cup performances is starting to wane.

Fans will put up with defeats, but they won’t stick around if they don’t see effort and commitment across all three periods.

The report card so far reads: Must do better.

Flying Finn:Flyers could look to follow the lead of Janne Kivilahti who has done more than most this season.

MoM on Saturday, he did all he could to try to grab this game by the scruff of the neck and change its momentum.

That needs to be replicated across the bench.

Atmosphere:The solitary drummer from Guildford seemed to make more noise than the 1100 fans in the rink on Saturday night.

True, they saw little to excite them, but the team has spoken of the importance of that wall of noise to give them that zap of energy.

That takes us back to them flying out of traps from the first puck drop. Do that and the fans will certainly follow.

Tik-Tok:Flyers’ new Tik-Tok channel is generating some smashing content.

A lot of work is going into making the short, sharp videos which go a long way to showing more of the character of the players and the spirit in the dressing-room.

It’s well worth checking out.