John’s face left tripping him as Fife thrash Clan
JOHN TRIPP labelled Braehead Clan’s 7-1 mauling at the hands of Fife Flyers ‘embarassing’ to kickstart a weekend of woe for the Glasgow side.
For Tripp’s first home league game in charge of Clan, a sell-out crowed were left stunned as the Flyers demolished their hopes as they raced into a 7-0 lead at one point.
Tripp cut an angry figure when he appeared from the locker room in the aftermath of the defeat, revealing he didn’t breathe a word to his team as the pain set in.
And the former German internationalist did not shy away from singling out those who let the 3500 supporters down the most on Saturday night.
“It’s embarrassing,” he said. “I’ll apologise to the fans. These guys are not showing up and doing their jobs. In a 7-1 loss we only allowed one five-onfive goal against. Those stats are disturbing. Three power-play goals on us, two short-handed against, and one four on four.
“Guys just aren’t playing hard. We have a couple of top guys like Cameron Burt and Ryan Potulny who are not pulling up their big boy pants right now. There are a couple of other guys I need better from right now. Christoffer Bjorklund on the powerplay is just not cutting it. So we need to go back.
“They didn’t play hard enough for the fans. If your big guys don’t play then what message does that send out? My best player was a 17-year-old kid [Jordan Beusa] and that’s embarrassing. He deserves the ice time. We can rectify this by playing hard tomorrow if these guys show up. If not, it’s going to be a long week.”
While the margin of defeat was not quite as great on Sunday night, Braehead could not halt their poor run and the 3-2 defeat away to Sheffield Steelers took their losing streak to four.
A Colton Fretter wrist shot was helped on by Ben O’Connor, with John Armstrong in the right place to stick the puck away for Steelers’ lead. They added a second five minutes later through captain Jonathan Phillips.
Ville Hamalainen picked up his first goal for the Clan, scrambling it home, though it was only goal line technology that confirmed the marker. A busy restart soon yielded an equaliser 17 seconds later as Potulny buried a chance and suddenly Braehead were making a contest of it.
But the joy was tempered a further 22 seconds on as Andreas Valdix’s shot flew past Ryan Nie and the hosts were in front again.