Having seen his side come from behind to win at the weekend, Kevin Parrish believes the Invicta Dynamos can go on and win the play-offs.

The Dynamos battled back from trailing 6-4 to the Cardiff NIHL Devils after the first leg of the play-off quarter final to win the second leg 9-4 and go through 13-10 on aggregate.

It wasn’t plain sailing for the Dynamos as they had to show all the resolve they could muster, having trailed 5-1 at one stage down in Cardiff and at 3-3 in the second leg, they still had a two goal deficit to make up.

In front of their own vociferous fans though, they gave everything to make it through to face league winners Chelmsford Chieftains in the next round and Parrish was full of praise for his side having seen off a spirited Cardiff side:

“I don’t think we deserved to come away from their place with a 6-4 loss as we’d hit the post six times. It was one of those nights that lady luck didn’t go our way.”

“At home we went 2-0 up and I was thinking, we’re in this and then suddenly it was two all and I was thinking, oh my god, where is this game going?”

“I think from the ups and downs we have had this season, we’ve got the character in our dressing room. I don’t think any other team in the top four will have gone through what we have. We have had to battle this year and battle to grind out results.”

“Once I saw Andy Smith’s fifth goal go in, I thought thank god for that!”

Having trailed by four and to win by three overall shows the spirit in this Dynamos side and Parrish believes the never say die attitude from his players is what is getting them through games:

“The boys are playing with their bodies on the line and I don’t think people realise what hockey guys go through in sixty minutes.”

“You’re not just touching the puck a few times here and there, it is continuous and guys are doing a minute or a minute and a half shifts.”

“We’d like to cut that down, but we can’t at the moment because of the way games are flowing.”

“Some guys are playing thirty to forty minutes of ice time at the moment, bandaged up or taped up to the nines.”

“We had a five hour bus trip back from Cardiff getting back at 4am.”

“We also have to play with two lines sometimes as we haven’t got the depth, but it is play-off time and it’s do or die.”

Parrish went on to praise the depth of his squad with some of his fringe players playing an important part over the two legs:

“Our third line were great and gave our boys a rest and when they were out there, they did their job.”

“The whole aggregate score thing was getting to me on the bench and I was forever trying to see what the score was. We’re not used to playing with an aggregate score, but we showed sheer determination.”

“We’ve got a couple of guys that are thinking that it is there last year here with us and some thinking about whether it is their last year playing, so that’s probably what keeps us going.”

The Dynamos coach had special praise for leading scorer Andy Smith who bagged five goals on Sunday night and has scored over 800 now for the Gillingham based side:

“I think he could have had six and I thought when Callum Fowler scored at the end, he was going to give him his double hat-trick, but he had the blinkers on and you can’t blame him for that!”

“Andy is not the most vocal captain, but he does his talking on the ice and that’s why the guys in the room and I have respect for him.”

“The last of the five he scored, I don’t think their goalie even saw it. It was the end of a shift too and I was screaming at him to get off.”

“He has been a terrific asset to this club and he hasn’t got over eight hundred points for nothing.”

The Dynamos will now face league winners Chelmsford Chieftains over two legs this coming weekend with the first to be played at the Silver Blades Ice Bowl in Gillingham on Saturday night.

Facing a side like Chelmsford could be daunting, but Parrish is looking forward to the occasion and believes his side are more than capable of beating them and going on to win the play-offs:

“We know we have got a mountain to climb against Chelmsford as they are a very, very good team, but I think we can come up with a system to beat them.”

“You just never know what’s going to come out of this team. It could go one of two ways, it could either go horribly wrong or go very, very well.”

“Week in, week out, I don’t know how we are going to play, but I just didn’t want to go out in the first week of the play-offs and if we turn up next weekend with the team I know we have got, we can beat these guys and we’ve proven it this year as we’ve beaten everyone in the top four and we can go on to the final and win it.”

Face off on Saturday night is 5:15pm with more information available from www.invictadynamos.com

Pictures supplied by David Trevallion.