“WITHOUT a doubt we’re going to be right up there.”
Those are the thoughts of Bracknell Bees head coach Scott Spearing after his first competitive game in charge ended in an entertaining 7-5 victory over Milton Keynes Thunder.
Spearing took over the reins of the Bees this summer after the club parted company with long-serving Lukas Smital.
After a break-up of the Elite Premier League, Bracknell are now competing in the National Ice Hockey League (NIHL) Division 1 South and they kicked off their campaign by storming from 5-3 behind in the final quarter.
Shaun Thompson and new signing Frankie Bakrlik both scored hat-tricks in the victory and Spearing believes he has a squad which can turnaround the club’s fortunes after recent years of struggles near the foot of the table.
“It takes a long time to build a team, but it’s been good fun,” Spearing told The Wokingham Paper.
“We’ve got a lot of quality and we’ve got guys from all over the place, not just gone wholesale and gone to try and buy another team out or anything like that.
“We’ve tried to bring in a lot of experience from NIHL players, ex EPL players, the imports, we’ve got two class goalies and we’ve got a great team of guys off the ice as well.
“We’ve got guys that have been around Bracknell for a long time, new and old, a lot of experience hockey wise and a lot of experience from the management side.
“We seem to be building a new vision.”
He continued: “Without a doubt we’re going to be right up there this season.
“That was my aim right from the start. I don’t want to be a team just scraping through.
“Before we picked any players I wanted to pick the right guys that were on the same page as what I was.
“Everyone is really buying into the systems we’re playing and the new style of hockey we’re trying to play and it seems to all be going well so far.”
Despite the winning start, Spearing knows it will still take some time for his new players to gel and become a formidable unit.
But he cannot help but be encouraged by what he’s seen on the ice.
“It’s very early stages,” said the player-coach.
“We’ve had two pre-season games but not a lot of training together.
“Everyone is playing with guys for the first time. There’s only a few guys that have paired up from the past season and we’ve got a lot of young guys as well.
“We’re trying to give the younger ones as much ice time as possible.
“It’s all positive signs really. There’s lots of stuff that we can work on and build from but no serious problems that’s for sure.”
It looked like being a losing start for Bracknell at Planet Ice.
Trailing 5-3 heading into the final 10 minutes, Spearing called a time-out and rallied his troops to produce a storming comeback.
“I thought we played OK for the first two periods but when we went down 5-3 in the third I had a chat with the boys and we turned it on and pulled back the win,” he said.
“It was a lot of character shown to be able to pull back from 5-3 to 7-5, four unanswered goals and I was really pleased with Thommo (Thompson), a proper leader on the team, scoring the goals.
“And obviously Frankie Bakrlik as well scoring the three goals on the PP, so a good performance from our key guys.”
Attention now turns to this weekend’s double header.
Bees first travel to Peterborough Phantoms in the league on Saturday (7pm), a team they have notoriously struggled against, before a first game at The Hive this season with a National Cup clash against Basingtoke Bison on Sunday (6pm).
“Peterborough are a good team and it’s a hard place to go into and win,” said Spearing.
“It’s not the nicest place. The fans give you grief and they’ve always got a good team.
“Slava (Koulikov) is a good coach so I’m expecting a tough game from there as always.
“But we’ve got a different squad now so it’s a different situation.
“We beat them last year so that monkey is off our back and 100% I’m going for the win.”
He continued: “To be honest, I don’t take a cup game different to a league game and nor do the players.
“We set up exactly the same, our drills are exactly the same, the attitude we take to training and pre-game skates is always exactly the same.
“We just go into every game planning to play our best and we want to win the two points.
“You’ve just got to keep rolling and keep doing the good things and make sure you’re making good habits.”
The home fans have had one chance to see Spearing’s new-look side when Swindon Wildcats came to Bracknell earlier this month for a pre-season friendly.
And the head coach says he is encouraged by the support his side have been getting so far.
“We had a really good crowd when we played Swindon at home and we had a great group of away fans that travelled to Milton Keynes with us,” he said.
“Myself and the management are really happy with the support we’ve been getting from the fans off the ice and we hope it will be a big crowd again this weekend.
“We’ll just keep building and try to get the fans back in the door.”
