There’s no time to lick wounds, there’s a title to win says Gaudet

The Giants have a busy schedule of games ahead of them, starting this weekend with the double-header road games against the Sheffield Steelers, while in the final three games of the league the have the Nottingham Panthers back-to-back at the SSE Arena.

All three teams, along with current fourth placed Cardiff Devils, are pushing in the business end of the season.

The Giants have a six point cushion over the Steelers and the Panthers (and a nine point advantage against Cardiff) plus they have a game in hand, so there is plenty to be confident about as the chase heats up.

Looking back at last weekend's double-header which saw the Giants sharing the points with the Devils, Gaudet said: “I think last weekend’s went well, Cardiff are a good team so we knew to expect a hard game from them right from the start.”

He added: “I think we bounced well after the loss on the Wednesday which saw us put out of the Challenge Cup, which was a big disappointment.

“The Saturday game against Cardiff was a very hard fought game. But I was very proud of the effort of the team on the Sunday. We came together as a group and got that big win.”

Reflecting further on the exit from the Challenge Cup but he agrees that the speed in the turnaround of games in the league means that there can be no time to dwell on loses.

He said: “The reality of our league is that you play so many games you just don’t have any time to sulk and lick your wounds.

“That is a good thing. We have earned our opportunity to be in first place in the league.

“That is something that we don’t really want to let slip or let the disappointment of Wednesday leak into our league campaign.”

He agrees that the Giants do not want any more points slipping away – every point counts in the run into the end of the season.

He said: “I think we’ve earned the right to be top of the league right now, we deserve that bit of a cushion.

“But that is no reason for us to think about taking the foot off the gas. We have to kept our focus on the title

“We will take each game and each weekend one at a time and get the job done, we pretty high quality opponents coming up, so that focus is needed.

“Our focus will be on the two games against Sheffield this weekend. Once we get those in the bag we will then turn our attention to who is up next.”

Gaudet says that he enjoys the business end of a season.

He said: “At the end of the day we are all competitors and we like to play games. So the more games we have, it's obviously better for us.”

He added: “I think it’s exciting to control your our own destiny and play some of the top teams like Sheffield and Nottingham who are coming down the stretch and to have an opportunity to affect the outcome of the league.

“We’re definitely not taking any of these games for granted. There a lot of really competitive teams in this league that pose a challenge.

“So it will be up to us to bring our best games for these last 10 games and see where we end up.”