Cardiff Devils look to turn season around with play-off success

Cardiff Devils are looking to turn their season around as they target the season's final piece of silverware in the Elite League play-offs.

Devils face Glasgow Clan in a two-leg quarter-final, hosting the Scottish team on Saturday, 23 April before Sunday's rematch.

The winners will go to the play-off finals in Nottingham the following weekend.

Play-off glory would end the season on a high for Devils, after they were beaten in the Challenge Cup final and finished third in the league.

"The beauty of the play-offs is that it's a new beginning," said managing director Todd Kelman.

"It's the easiest and the hardest championship you'll ever win."

Things have changed markedly at the Devils in the past couple of years.

In August 2021, Cardiff met up for their first training session of the season with just five players from their pre-pandemic roster.

There was also new coach, Jarrod Skalde, the successor to Andrew Lord who had big boots to fill, as Lord had won nine trophies in six seasons in charge of Cardiff.

It was perhaps no surprise that the Devils had a challenging start to their season.

Before they could play any pre-season fixtures they had to face German giants Adler Mannheim and Switzerland's HC Lausanne home and away in the Champions Hockey League.

They lost three of those matches, but a 4-1 home victory over Lausanne in only their second game of the season suggested Cardiff could again be a dominant Elite League team this season.

However, expectations have not been met, and the club announced on 8 April they had "parted ways" with head coach Skalde.

Skalde's sacking would not have been a complete surprise for many Devils fans, but the timing of the announcement so close to the end of the season was uncharacteristic of an ownership and management that previously had been so stable.

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"It sucks being in a position when you have to make those decisions with people that you really like and respect," Kelman said.

"Jarrod Skalde is a really good person and he's a good coach and he did a good job for us.

"I think I've been doing this long enough, but I think the fans need to trust me and trust my decisions in certain aspects of the business.

"I just felt that moving forward, it just wasn't working and it was my choice. I stand by that decision, I really do.

"If experience has shown me anything, if you decide that you're not going to work with someone going forward, why work another day with them?

"If I don't think that we're going to work well together, going forward, I'm not going to work another day with you."

While Cardiff's season has been far from disastrous, their inconsistency in the Elite League was the key factor in Skalde's dismissal.

Devils won 75% of their games during October and November, but in the run up to Christmas lost four of their seven games.

Things took a turn for the better from Boxing Day, as Cardiff went on to win 15 matches and lose just two - both away games at Belfast Giants.

But another poor run of form followed from mid-February, as Devils again lost four games out of seven.

And by early March it was clear that the fight for the title had gone from a three-way battle to a straight contest between Sheffield Steelers and Belfast Giants.

Ultimately the Giants had too strong a squad, and on 10 April, won their fifth Elite League title with two games to spare.

"We've been on some good runs," said Devils captain Mark Richardson.

"I think the losses on the road really, really cost us this year in the title race."

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Earlier in the season Devils had the chance to be the first Elite League team to secure silverware, but fell at the final hurdle.

In mid-March Cardiff had reached the Challenge Cup Final, and with just four defencemen in their line-up they led Belfast 2-0 away in Northern Ireland going into the final period.

However, goals from Giants forwards Tyler Soy and David Goodwin took the game into overtime, which Belfast eventually won in the fifth minute with a score from Ben Lake.

"It was a great effort, we gave ourselves the best chance we could to win," captain Richardson recalled.

"It was gutting, we came close."

Following Skalde's departure, Kelman put assistant coaches Brodie Dupont and Neil Francis in charge of the side, with Canadian Dupont taking the lead role.

Looking back at their Challenge Cup defeat, Dupont said: "That was devastating for the whole team.

"It was a weird feeling that you have to process immediately because you have a game two days later.

"I was really proud of the guys and we have to take that and turn that into something we can learn from and get better."

Since the appointment of Dupont as interim coach, Devils have won three games out of four, scoring 16 goals and conceding seven.

In the play-off quarter-finals they face sixth-placed Glasgow Clan, who have beaten all the other teams in the league this season.

They are a team that Devils players and coaches know cannot be treated lightly.

"We are a club that can contend for the play-offs," said Dupont.

"We've got one weekend coming up to prove that we can beat Glasgow in the quarter-finals.

"They always give us trouble, they have some high end skill, they have an all-around good game plan, so we're expecting it to be a really hard weekend."

Kelman added: "Glasgow will be chomping at the bit. They'll be confident coming in to play us, they've had some success against us, but we've had success against them.

"Our aim is to get to Nottingham and see what we can do."