With games in the regular season becoming fewer each week, Eddy Gaffney knows the Fergus Devils are running out of time to make their push up the standings. To that end, he didn't mince words last week after losing two of three games.
In talking about the team's 6-5 loss to the Stayner Siskins - a game in which the Devils showed enough fight but not enough discipline to win - Gaffney said it came down to a few mistakes that wound up costing them.
A familiar refrain for most of the season.
"If we had played as hard as we did in the final few minutes for the whole game, it would've been a different story," he said. "We made a couple of mistakes and they took advantage of them. We went from the high of tying the game in the second period to throwing it away late in that period. The push we had at the end was something we needed for all 60 minutes."
Tired legs were partly to blame, according to Gaffney - three games and a practice in one week appeared to be too much for the Devils to deal with, but they'll be facing the same schedule this coming week so it's something they're going to have to handle.
One thing that should help them deal with any kind of fatigue will be the return of Reid Zorzi. Gaffney said there were a few issues that needed to be worked out but were resolved and Zorzi was welcomed back into the fold by the rest of the Devils.
"The guys are happy to have him back, and he's going to give us a big boost," he said. "We decided that if we were going to climb the league ladder, we needed a guy like Reid in there fighting with us."
And as the team welcomed Zorzi back into its lineup, they bid farewell to Rob Rankin. The team made a deal with the league-leading Alliston Hornets to send Rankin there, turning the goaltending duties over to Brendan Moore.
"We wanted to send Rob somewhere that would give him a good chance this year," Gaffney said. "We've got some changes in mind looking ahead to next year, so we thought it was a good time to start and help Rob at the same time."