Lol Paul feels Deeside Dragons’ pre-season fitness work is really paying off after their flying start to the season continued on Saturday.
The 11-1 win at Blackburn Eagles was Deeside’s third of the league season, taking them to top spot in the Laidler Conference standings before results elsewhere on Sunday dropped them to third.
They have scored 26 goals in those games.
Saturday’s encounter in Blackburn was hard fought early on, with the Dragons remaining goalless until the sixth minute of the first period.
They ended the second session with a 4-1 advantage, before scoring a remarkable seven unanswered goals in the final 20 minutes.
Paul said: “I was delighted with the performance, and our fitness is really paying off. I’m building a strong team ethic here, as a gang of individual players will never win the league.
“We had some great goals from Adrian Palak and Philip Supa, but the guys are scoring from all over the team. I am very pleased with that.
“The lads went into the second period break with a 4-1 lead, but they weren’t happy. They wanted to go out and really step it up, which they did.”
Supa was on target twice in the opening period, with further strikes from Palak and Marc Lovell after the break, before Blackburn scored their only goal of the game.
The third period, however, was all one-way traffic, with goals from James Parsons, Paul Davies, Palak (3), Ross Kennedy and Simon Furnival.
Paul added: “After a performance like that, you have to keep pushing the lads to improve. If we rested on our laurels, we would stagnate.
“The game is history now. We’ve done what we need to do, but now we have to prepare for the next game. We’ll be doing that all week in training. Blackburn have already beaten Nottingham, so that should give us an indication of where we are. But as I’ve said many times before, we can’t underestimate anybody.”
The Dragons host Nottingham Lions at Deeside Ice Rink this Saturday (7pm).
