THE Belfast Giants' Elite League title hopes suffered a shattering blow at the weekend with successive defeats at the hands of the Cardiff Devils at the SSE Arena.
On Saturday night, Derrick Walser's team fell to a 3-2 defeat 24 hours after a 4-3 loss to the league leaders.
Cardiff now hold a seven-point advantage at the top of the standings and, to make matters potentially worse for the Giants, the Welsh side have the benefit of a game in hand.
With just nine games left in the regulation season, it's difficult to see the Giants capturing the title and it's more likely they will be playing for second place which would give them a potentially easier draw in the end-of-season play-offs.
In Saturday's match, both teams were guilty of ill-discipline, with nine players from each side spending time in the penalty-box over the course of the 60 minutes.
Then there were ugly scenes at the conclusion of the game when no fewer than 26 players and officials were sanctioned after a free-for-all which could have further repercussions.
Colin Shields managed to put a brave face on things following the Giants' third defeat in a row, which is likely to end his chances of getting his hands on the Elite League trophy for a third time in his ninth season with the organisation.
"We will just have to refocus and try and get back to work; I thought we improved on a lot of things (on Saturday) and we did a lot of things better but there's still a lot of things we need to work on," said the Scottish forward.
"We are going to battle right to the final game and you never know what can happen in this league or in professional sport.
"It's just a matter of dusting ourselves off and trying to keep improving to give ourselves the best opportunity we can."
"We got ourselves back into the game at 2-2 but if you keep taking penalties you're going to be in trouble.
"It was disappointing that, having got ourselves back into it, we lost it in the third period.
"They've got a good power-play but we had our chances too and then we had a four-on-three in the third period but we didn't capitalise.
Guillaume Doucet gave Cardiff and early lead when he sent the the puck past Stephen Murphy in the fifth minute and Patrick Asselin doubled the Cardiff lead at 21:19 on a power-play.
Blair Riley pulled one back in the 36th minute and then David Rutherford tied things up when he skilfully converted a penalty-shot within two minutes..
However, two minutes into the final period Andrew Hotham grabbed the winner after Riley had controversially been called for a high-sticking offence and that was that.
