Cardiff Devils: Coach Brodie Dupont losing sleep over 'embarrassing' loss

Cardiff Devils 9-3 defeat in Belfast was their second of this campaign against last season's league champions after Giants won 4-2 in Cardiff in October

Cardiff Devils head coach Brodie Dupont says they need to move on quickly after last weekend's "unacceptable" 9-3 defeat to Belfast Giants.

The Devils travel to Dundee Stars and host Manchester Storm aiming to respond to a game in which they conceded seven unanswered second period goals.

"We lose sleep over this. It was an embarrassing loss, there's no other way to put it," said Dupont.

Cardiff are fourth in Elite League after an erratic start to the season.

Last season's Play-off champions opened their league campaign with five straight wins but have won only four of the following nine and last weekend's defeat in Belfast was the heaviest in recent history.

"We would love to go back and change it, but we can't and we have to take that on the chin, but we have to understand that it's not acceptable," says Dupont who was converted from player to coach towards the back-end of last season.

"I'm trying to put that result as a reminder to never to put ourselves in that situation again.

"We've addressed some of it on the ice and off the ice with some meetings and trying to figure out what happened.

"Unfortunately I had to watch the game back and I've thrown the video in the trash - it's done."

The last time Cardiff conceded nine goals in a game was in October 2019 - but that was against four-time European title winners Frolunda HC of Sweden, in the Champions Hockey League.

And their inconsistencies this season have not been restricted to the league. They just scraped through to the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup after losing their opening four group matches.

The Devils have scored 87 goals in 22 matches this season but after their capitulation in Belfast have now conceded 72 - a ratio not indicative of a team that can confidently think they can win a title.

"There's not a simple fix, you don't just come in and say 'Guys that's never going to happen again for the rest of the year'," said Dupont.

"It's a journey of finding why are we doing it, what are we going to do to address it? If it doesn't work, we try something new. How do we get there? It starts in practice for me.

"We have to go out on the ice and get back to the level of execution that's needed and required.

"I'm proud of the way the guys came in this week, they could have come in and sulked easily. But they put their work boots on, it's been a very good couple of days of training.

"We want to get back to feeling good about ourselves and we want to review what we did well, what we need to fix, and then bin it.

"Move on to Sunday against Manchester, we want to have another good game, and then bin it."

Cardiff start the weekend with a points percentage of just 0.68, compared to 0.84 for league leaders Guildford, 0.82 for defending champions Belfast and 0.81 for perennial trophy challengers Sheffield Steelers.

A rapid improvement looks necessary if Devils are to win a sixth League title.

Dupont is very well aware of what is expected of him and the Devils squad: "This organisation has a ton of pride and we take that very, very seriously to continue the culture that's been built here.

"We came to Cardiff because there's pressure to win. This is what we grew up wanting to be in, you want this pressure.

"We owe it to the fans and we owe it to ourselves to come in with an attitude that we start the game on time, we need to get our mind-set engaged that when the puck drops, it's game on."

Cardiff Devils travel to Dundee Stars on Saturday, 12 November (19:00 GMT) On Sunday, 13 November they host Manchester Storm at Ice Arena Wales (18:00 GMT).