SWINDON Wildcats utility man Lee Richardson believes the side might benefit from being short on numbers this weekend.

The Link Centre side go into games with Manchester Phoenix and Peterborough Phantoms on Saturday and Sunday respectively without a whole host of players due to them being with the Great Britain under 20s squad in Estonia.

Cats youngsters Callum Buglass, Ollie Betteridge, Toms Rutkis and Floyd Taylor, as well as the Swindon based Okanagan Hockey Academy players Glen Billing, Michael Stratford and Luc Johnson, are at the World Championships.

Head coach Ryan Aldridge must also leave out one of captain Jan Kostal, Jonas Hoog, Tomasz Malasinski, Henri Sandvik or Kenton Smith due to only being allowed to ice four imports.

And while Richardson admits that fatigue will be a factor, he feels that they still have the star quality to shine.

“I think that we are down to 11 players for the weekend,” Richardson said. “But you can’t worry about that.

“What it does mean is that we will have our top boys like Aaron (Nell) and Henri on the ice for most of the shifts.

“Apart from fatigue, it can help having your top guys out there.

“We have our home game on Saturday (against Manchester) and we have to make it count and pick up the two points and then try and get what we can on the Sunday.”

The game against last year’s regular season champions Manchester could see Swindon leapfrog their visitors to sixth place in the EPL with a victory.

“It has been a long time since we last played Manchester – not since the opening weekend of the season,” Richardson added.

“They haven’t had the best of starts but we know they are looking to improve and we really need to be on our game.

“We had a good win at home last weekend and it was good to get the win on Sunday too.

“In this league you need to be picking up points every weekend.”

Having played the majority of last season as a D-man, Richardson, who came up through the ranks at Swindon, has already doubled his goal tally from last term with four.

But the 31-year-old says that the goals count for little unless the team are winning.

“It has been a pretty good start to the season for me personally,” he said. “The way our team is set up, we have the best goalie in league and such a strong offensive line, it is good that I have been able to contribute.

“At my age scoring goals isn’t as important as the team doing well – that is the most important thing for me.”