THE win or go home mentality of the play-offs changes things.

Everyone is playing with a bit more desperation and you are willing to do that extra bit to get the win.

The intensity of the game is amped up, there’s more physicality as well and in every little play you are trying to do your best.

The play-offs plays on your mind more in the preparation.

For a regular season game, it’s rare to get nerves but during the preparation this week there will be more nerves than usual.

Once you start playing, though, that won’t really feature and all you are thinking of is just to do your best to help the team.

There’s benefits and downsides to playing at home first.

The first game tends to be more cagey, neither team wants to open up because there’s three periods of hockey the next day.

But there’s always the opportunity to get the win and take momentum into the away game.

There’s different ways of going about it but we will be looking to get a win on the Saturday; if it’s one goal that’s good, two goals is great, more than that will be fantastic.

We will try and win that game to take a goal advantage to Guildford.

It’s always good to play in front of a bigger crowd; the noise and their reaction to the game makes it more intense.

It’s good to play in when there’s more of an atmosphere and you can feed off it.

It will be a big crowd in Guildford too and that will be fun for the players to play in.

I think we are underdogs but the way the league is now there’s not so much of a gap between top and bottom.

I think we have underachieved and our league position does not reflect the team we have.

We have to play to our full potential but if we can raise our level to what it should have been during the season we can get that lead on Saturday.

It should be a very good game and it will certainly be something if we can beat them but it will be difficult.