COVENTRY Blaze head coach Danny Stewart wants his side to compete for trophies with the club well-placed to challenge for honours having impressed over the first half of the campaign.
Blaze have been in and around the top four places in the Elite League for much of the season and qualified for the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup having topped a difficult group.
Canadian coach Stewart now wants his players to rise to the challenge and finish the season in the top four as Blaze seek a first Elite League play-off triumph since 2014/15.
Stewart exclusively told the Observer: “We want to compete for trophies, we want to find a way and have a good play-off run, what we’re capable of when we’re healthy and we’re playing well – we can beat anyone.
“We finished eighth last year but well ahead of the teams below us, we were only four points away from fourth, it was a crazy year of ups and downs, injuries and suspensions.
“There was a long stretch where we were in fourth place and we just let ourselves down at the end but our expectations from what we’ve seen in the first half of the season is to keep our position in the standings and stay in the top four.
“I really like this group – I could go up and down the roster and talk about every guy – I love this group, they are fully bought in and they like playing for each other, they will go to battle for each other.
“The important thing for us is to keep our focus and take it one game at a time.”
Blaze have been prolific in attack this term and began the campaign with six wins in their first seven competitive matches in league and cup.
However, Stewart wants his side to be more consistent ahead of a busy festive period which sees Blaze play four games between Boxing Day and the start of the new year.
Stewart added: “Reflecting back, the season has gone very well, we’re right up there in the league, it’s been a very good start, we’ve only had a couple of spells with injuries, as every team does.
“This season we were probably in the toughest Challenge Cup group and we managed to win that group and advance to the quarter-finals.
“I’m happy, we’re scoring goals, we’ve defended well and our goal-tending has been good, our specialties have been good as well, there’s still lots of work to do.
“The depth that we have in scoring has been impressive, the three lines are all scoring and the contributions from our deep, we have the highest scoring back end in the league, around 20 goals is a phenomenal production.
“We’ve been a little bit up and down in terms of holding leads, I don’t want to take anything away from our group because at times we’ve done a great job, against Belfast twice at home we let good leads slip away.
“It’s just making sure the consistency is there in closing out games so that we’re picking up those extra points to stay at the top of table.
“Other than that we just want to keep getting better every game as a group and keep our focus so that we don’t have that drop off.
“For the short-term we’re not looking to add anyone else to the roster, we’ve got to work within a certain budget, it will depend how we look health wise over the busy Christmas stretch.
“The club have been great in giving me the resources to bring players in, hopefully us being healthy will get us through this Christmas stretch.”
