Building Craftsmen Dumfries-sponsored Solway Sharks entertain league new boys Sheffield Senators this Saturday (7pm at the Ice Bowl) still looking for a first win of the season.
Sharks went down 5-3 to Billingham Stars in their home opener last weekend, a second straight loss and leaving the Dumfries club four points adrift of the leaders in the embryonic National Ice Hockey League standings.
On Saturday night Joe Coulter and captain Struan Tonnar scored just 15 seconds apart in the 35th minute to bring the Sharks back to 2-3 against Billingham after the Teessiders had taken a 3-2 lead. However the visitors netted twice in the first two minutes of the final period to take control of the game and render Juraj Senko’s last minute goal a mere consolation.
Sheffield Senators come to Dumfries this Saturday also looking for a first win – they were beaten twice by their fellow Sheffield club Spartans last weekend in their first NIHL Division 1 games following their promotion last season.
Solway Sharks coach Martin Grubb reflected on the Billingham loss, saying: ““It’s very disappointing. You can’t give a team – especially teams with the ability that Billingham have, a three goal start.
“You can’t give up sloppy goals like we did. You can’t look at the guy next to you on the bench to do your job, everybody needs to be accountable. Even tonight when we did feel our way back into the game with a couple of quick goals we seem to have a good knack of being very wasteful in front of the net.
“At the end of the second period we said ‘if we win the third and we get something out of the game’. Then in the first couple of shifts we find ourselves another two goals down. We need to wake up and we need to wake up quickly, we need to get better and that’s my job – I have to take the responsibility as the Head Coach of this team to make our team better.”
Sharks have several new faces this season but Grubb refused to use that as an excuse.
“We are still getting guys bedded in but I don’t think we can use that as an excuse. I think Martin Cingel did everything tonight but score – he was frustrated, sometimes they shut him down well, sometimes he managed to make himself some space but he couldn’t buy a goal. Juraj [Senko] got frustrated at times too because he just wants success, he wants to win and he wants to look up and make the pass. We can’t look at these two guys to create everything – in general we just made too many bad decisions both offensively and defensively.
“We’ll get better – we’ve recruited well and we need to work with them. I still believe that the team we’ve got is good enough to challenge for honours, but as I’ve just said to the boys, we need to draw a line under this, we’re zero for two, we come back Tuesday night, we work harder and we get our season started next weekend with some points on the board.
“We have to do that no matter how – whether it be a nice win or an ugly win, we need to start clawing our way back into this. The teams around us and above us are not going to give us any easy games.”
Saturday’s game at Dumfries Ice Bowl faces off at 7pm, with doors open from 6pm. Tickets on sale from the Ice Bowl reception are £8 adults, £5 concessions and a family ticket (2+3) is £16.
Photo credits: ‘sharksgoals’ by Duncan Speirs; ‘grubb’ by Mark Paterson/Skidpix
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