Familiar face Dulle returns for Stingrays

Cloutier placed his entire roster on two weeks’ notice during Saturday night’s 3-2 defeat to Edinburgh Capitals, before seeing his players go on to post the perfect response with a first-ever victory at Dundee Stars the following night – only their second win of the season.

Dulle’s arrival – in time for Wednesday night’s home match against Braehead Clan – means at least one import will be heading for the exit door with Cloutier dropping to the bench for the next few games to give himself a better idea on who should stay and who should go.

Dulle proved a hit both on and off the ice last season, posting 43 points, including 12 goals, in 63 games for the club. He also played a leading role in the club’s community programme and was rewarded for his efforts at the Hull & East Yorkshire’s Sporting Heroes and Champions awards.

After his debut season in Hull, the 31-year-old Canadian headed Down Under to hook up with Sydney Bears where it was expected he would finish his career as he was known to be considering his options outside of hockey.

Cloutier was always keen for his 2010-11 captain to return for a second season but, with Dulle unsure of his future plans, the Hull coach eventually settled on other options.

The two have kept in touch since the end of last season and, given Hull’s dispiriting start to the current campaign, the return of Dulle will, if nothing else, hopefully tighten up the Stingrays’ blue line.

“Dulles was a real good player for us last year and I’m glad he’s back,” said Cloutier. “He will strengthen our ‘D’, which is what we need right now.

“He’s a good guy to have around both on and off the ice. He cares about being in Hull, this is the only place he wants to play over here. I’m used to him, he’s used to me, the club, the fans and the city so it should be easy for him to re-adjust coming back here.

“He’s a well-rounded player and will battle in all areas, he puts up the points and he’ll help us be more solid at the back.

“He’s been keeping in shape back home in Canada since he got back from Australia. I had a good player-coach relationship with him and it will be good to have him back here.”

With regard to who might be first through the exit door, Cloutier refused - not surprisingly - to be drawn on who is likely to be heading out.

His frustrations over the lack of victories so far this season boiled over during the second interval during the Edinburgh game with his side 3-1 down, leading him to issue his two-weeks’ notice threat to every player in the room.

While he noticed an improvement in the third period, Hull still slipped to their 14th defeat of the season. Sunday night’s hard-fought 2-1 road win in Dundee will have gone some way to impressing Cloutier and assistant Bobby McEwan, but the Hull boss is still looking to be convinced by a number of players in the next 10 days or so as he watches from the sidelines.

“These guys have to pick it up and prove to me that they want to be here,” said Cloutier.

“No disrespect to Edinburgh, they deserved to win, but we can’t put in a performance like we did against them.

“I know we’d not been getting results prior to that but at least we had been playing well - particularly against the top teams.

“It was time to send a message during that interval to the players - I’d had enough.

“It was the quietest bus ride up to Dundee so I knew they were focused and we went up there, played great for two periods and, while we got heavily outshot in the third, we did what we had to do to get the win - we ground it out.

“We’ve never won there before and it’s a very long trip home when you lose, so it was nice to have some fun on the way back for a change.”

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Twitter: @philarra