LEE Richardson admits turning out for ice hockey on a weekend is now the ‘easy’ part of his life after becoming a father for the first time.

The 29-year-old forward had his world turned upside down in the best possible way last Saturday when wife Sam gave birth to Max, less than 12 hours before Richardson played for Wildcats in the 4-2 home win over Manchester.

With a week to rest and recuperate - at least in principle - Richardson should be raring to go for Sunday’s EPL clash with MK Lightning at the Link Centre (6pm), and the former Cardiff man is looking forward to getting out on the ice once more.

“Having a baby has been a bit of a culture shock, I listened to what people said beforehand and I knew it was going to be hard,” he said.

“But when it actually happens it really does bring it home, you don’t get an instruction manual and it made the game on Saturday seem easy.

“This is the opposite because you have to figure everything out, but he’s doing very well.

“Me and Sam have been lucky in that all the fixtures have worked out quite well - we only played on Saturday which meant I could go into the hospital all of Sunday.

“Just playing this Sunday has given us six days to figure things out, it’s a bit of a ropey one at Sheffield on Tuesday night but we’ll just have to deal with it, but then we just play once the following weekend (at Telford on Sunday, December 9).

The experienced forward is anticipating a difficult encounter when Swindon meet the Lightning, a team who he says produce on a regular basis.

“Milton Keynes have always got one of those teams that are very consistent,” said Richardson.

“If they are losing they are losing by one and if they are winning they are winning by a goal. They don’t score many goals but they don’t let many in.

“They are a hard-working team and when you play them you always know it’s going to be a tough game.

“They are the team in the league that is probably the most consistent.

“Milton Keynes have had quite an established team for a lot of years, they came into the league as the big boys and didn’t really change too many bodies.

“They never seem to get off to a bad start and play to the same level every night.

“Consistency is something we’ve been trying to find and while we’ve lost a few points this year, we’ve also picked them up in places like Manchester, Guildford and Basingstoke. We just need to close games out a bit more.”