Murrayfield Racers must impose their style on Comets in Cup final

Regular starter Mark McGill, above, will divide his duties with Craig Douglas

Defending champions, Murrayfield Racers travel to Tayside to face-off against Dundee Comets in tonight’s first leg of ice hockey’s Stuart Robertson Cup final, and netminder Craig Douglas believes Racers must dictate their style of play on the Dundee outfit ahead of tomorrow’s return

leg at Murrayfield (face-off 6pm).

Douglas, who joined the club early this season after spending eight years playing for Racers’ SNL rivals Kirkcaldy Kestrels and Elite league outfit Fife Flyers, said: “The Comets, are maybe struggling a wee bit just now, but have always notoriously been a good team and our games against them have been tight, but we’ll be going in confident and hoping to win both legs.

“Playing up in Dundee is different to playing in Murrayfield. It’s a much smaller ice pad, and the Comets are used to that and they’ll be looking to make full use of their home advantage.

“We need to make sure we stick to our own game, we’re a young team and we’ve quite a lot of speed, so we need to play to utilise those advantages and not play the game the way Comets like to in their own rink. I’ve played in finals before with the Kestrels – there was a few years when we won pretty much everything – and have been down to the play-off final weekend with the Flyers.

But that was a few years ago now. I’m really excited to be back playing in a cup final, and it’s great for the team to have a chance to end the year on a high.”

Racers’ director of hockey Tony Hand intends to split the weekend’s net-inding duties between Douglas and regular starter Mark McGill, and Douglas continued: “Everybody’s been using this week in training to get their legs going ahead of the two games, we’ll be ready to go and hopefully have a full team to pick from.”