BRACKNELL Bees player-coach Lukas Smital said his side have only themselves to blame for their 7-4 defeat by Peterborough Phantoms at The Hive on Sunday, writes Dave Wright.

“Individual mistakes cost us pretty much every single goal,” he said.“It wasn’t something special that beat us; it was again our errors – that is the bottom line. Defensively, we need to tighten up and eliminate them as much as we can.”

Bees were also not helped by the fact they were unable to train last Thursday due to work being undertaken to the roof.

“We can’t use that as an excuse, but it is a fact that the last time we were on the ice was last Tuesday and there was no game yesterday (Saturday),” said Smital.

“It does take a little time to get those legs going and get warm, but as I’ve said the reason we lost was down to errors.”

Bees conceded three goals inside the first 14 minutes. They drew the next two periods, but by then the damage had been done.

“It was 2-2 and 2-2, but it should have been 2-0 to us in both periods,” added Smital.

“We scored four goals against arguably one of the best goalies (Janis Auzins) in the league, so that was pleasing, but we should have had more.

“Offensively, at times we were doing the things we wanted to do, keeping the traffic in front of him and looking to create opportunities off the rebounds.

“In the third (period) we had a lot of pressure, scored two goals and had the momentum, but we need to be playing for 60 minutes like that. Again that is down to experience and desire.”