It was after a 6-5 overtime win over the Dundee Stars three and a half weeks ago that head coach Adam Keefe challenged his Belfast Giants players to step up defensively but, in the changing room, one player in particular was challenging himself to do better.
After conceding four goals from 16 shots in the first two periods, and five from 27 in the entire game, netminder Tom McCollum was left to ponder a tough night. Despite picking up the win and making two huge breakaway saves in overtime to prevent Dundee from winning it, the American was less than impressed with his own performance.
“I didn’t play very well in that game,” concedes the 34-year-old.
“First real home game, I’m usually pretty calm, but maybe I was too excited. I feel like I’m playing my best when I let things come to me but in that game I was being a little too aggressive and I put myself in a couple of bad spots.
“The important thing was as the game went on I was able to come up with some big saves at the right time and the guys put one more goal on the board and got us the right result, even if it wasn’t the way we wanted to do it.”
But if that game was McCollum’s first experience of the SSE Arena, his second was considerably better and proved that the Stars performance was very much the exception and not the rule.
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In Saturday’s 3-1 win over the Cardiff Devils, the New York native was almost unbeatable, the only shot of 20 that came his way to evade him being Jarrod Gourley’s long-range effort early in the first period as the Giants stormed back for a huge Elite League win.
That, combined with another outstanding performance in last week’s clash at the Sheffield Steelers, albeit in a 3-2 shoot-out loss, is much more reflective of what Belfast is expecting of McCollum, who has a .917 save percentage in four games this season, although the man himself is quick to deflect the praise.
“Jackson (Whistle) and I both have the benefit of playing behind a great team,” insists the former Detroit Red Wing.
“Those last two games especially there have been a lot of blocked shots and our defencemen helped me see pretty much every shot cleanly, which makes my job easier. They were there to help me out when I gave up a few tough rebounds.
“Cardiff had so many odd-man rushes in that game and they barely got a shot off because there was good pressure from our defencemen or they broke up the chance before they could shoot.
“Adam was happy that we won our first few Cup games but he wasn’t happy with how we did it. The guys, since we started our League games, have really buckled down and played well in our own end, eliminating chances.
“We’re happy with how things have improved but this team is always hungry to get better at the next thing and take it to the next level every game.”
That next game sees the Giants swap their League bid to return to a Challenge Cup campaign that has started perfectly, with four wins from four thus far leading them to a second trip to Kirkcaldy to take on the Fife Flyers on Wednesday night (7.30pm).
A win would give them an opportunity to clinch a Semi-Final spot as early as this weekend if they could also double up on the Glasgow Clan but, first and foremost, McCollum is just eager to take it one game at a time.
“We’re happy with it,” says the netminder of their start to the season.
“So far, three League games, the team as a whole have played really well all nine periods of those games and that’s all you can ask to start the year.
“From an internal standpoint, you always wonder how you stack up against those teams until you play them. Even down bodies, we battled deep into the third period in both games to get positive results which is huge for team confidence. It shows how close our team mindset is. You can see it watching both of those games, nobody took a shift off.
“Our whole group has had the mentality of win the next game and we’ll deal with everything after the fact.”