Defying the odds has been the story of Fife Flyers’ season.
Head coach Todd Dutiaume wants to keep that narrative going for one more week in the Elite League play-offs final four.
The Kirkcaldy club were written off by many in early January as having no hope of getting this far.
After beating Dundee Stars at the weekend though, they now have a semi-final against Belfast Giants to look forward to on Saturday, and hopefully a final on Sunday.
It’s a huge task. Giants won the league with 89 points, 23 ahead of second-placed Sheffield Steelers. They won on 43 occasions and only lost nine games.
Seventh-placed Fife gathered 53 points from their regular season games. They won 24 games and lost 28, finishing the season with a four-game winning sequence when the pressure was really on.
Fife only beat the Giants once in four attempts, a 6-2 win at Rosslyn Street in mid-March.
Giants will point to the fact that they iced back-up netminder Andrew Dickson who had 24 shots to deal with.
The teams were level at 2-2 after the first period, but Fife took the next two periods 2-0 for the confidence-boosting win with Ned Lukacevic, Derek Roehl, Matt Nickerson, Bobby Chaumont, Danny Stewart and Jordan Fulton counting.
The other games went to Giants. The Northern Irish side won 5-4 in overtime at Kirkcaldy and claimed a 3-2 overtime success at The Odyssey and hold a 6-4 success in their own rink.
Dutiaume said: “We take one game at a time, just like we’ve been doing over the last three months and we’ve made the final four. It worked for us.
“Belfast are a quality club, but we’re on a roll. This is our 75th anniversary season and we’re playing well. We’re enjoying this and we know this is a one-off game. There are no second chances here.
“Our team is playing with confidence and we’ve been playing under pressure, just like play-off hockey, since February.
“Sure we respect Belfast but I have a lot of respect for my guys who have battled through to get the Nottingham.”