The Fife Flyers are all set for the start of a new era.
And Max Birbraer, the former New Jersey Devils draft selection and Cardiff Devils standout, finds himself in the middle of the story.
When the Flyers were acquired by a new ownership group in June, Birbraer was appointed to spearhead the club’s transformation as its President and General Manager.
He faces quite the project.
Fife won only five regular-season games last term and entered the offseason firmly behind the eight ball.
By the time Birbraer took office, the Flyers’ domestic rivals had already started building their rosters.
He, by contrast, had a blank slate.
In the months since, Birbraer has rapidly set about rebuilding the Flyers, signing twenty-two players and making Jamie Russell his first head coach appointment.
On Saturday [23 August], the former Israel international forward spoke with British Ice Hockey. Here is every word he said.
Max Birbraer: ‘Time has been the biggest challenge we’ve faced’
What has been the biggest challenge you have faced since joining the Flyers in June?
We didn’t really take control of the team, per se, until just over two months ago and leading up to it was a long process of Elite League due diligence and finalising everything with the previous owners.
It’s been a challenge to say the least and the main hurdle is obviously time.
I’ll skip to the last two months, when we started recruiting, and it’s been between me and the coach [Jamie Russell], being all hands on deck, trying to put together a team.
And we’ve managed to do it at the last second, if you will. The last guys are arriving today and it’s all systems go.
Time, in combination with me being a rookie GM, has been the biggest challenge we’ve faced.
When you think about trying to execute something, it’s taken us that much longer because we haven’t had our head around.
Luckily, we have Gareth Chalmers [Flyers Chief Commercial Officer] on board, who has basically been running the day-to-day operations of the club and he’s there with such a wealth of experience.
That combination has enabled us to assemble a team in record time and basically build the organisation fresh from scratch within just over two months.
Max Birbraer: ‘I just love the atmosphere in smaller buildings’
You’ve experienced at all sorts of levels, whether that’s here [with the Devils] or over in the American Hockey League. Gareth, as you say, has tonnes of experience working in the Elite League and Jamie comes over from the ECHL and NCAA. With that in mind, what has surprised you the most since stepping into Fife?
The whole appeal of this project for the ownership group is that we’re the oldest club in the league.
It’s got a huge heritage, an amazing fanbase, and because of last season it almost seemed like the perfect opportunity to start from scratch and put our own stamp on it.
Whether it’s a bit of a rebrand, implementing different processes, or changing the type of players that we bring in. In that sense, it felt like a good opportunity to start from scratch.
From a personal perspective, I know quite a bit about Fife from playing against them and I know firsthand what the fanbase is like and what they expect to see on the ice.
From that perspective, it’s easy to say that they want an honest, hard-working, and hard to play against team that entertains. They’re not expecting championships right off the bat: they want to be competitive, with a team that entertains.
The building itself: you walk in and just get that atmosphere. It’s got the old Slap Shot feel to it and I personally love that.
I’m not a huge fan of arenas, I just feel like the atmosphere in smaller buildings, where the fans are right on top of you, are amazing. And that’s what we’re looking forward to.
Max Birbraer: ‘We have a coach who enjoys teaching’
You’ve often spoken about building on an ice-identity: how satisfied are your 2025-26 roster?
I imagine, coming to the market late in the day, many of your targets had already signed elsewhere…
I’m not going to lie to you: it’s been a massive challenge – and from several different points of view. First of all, because we were so late on the scene, there were sort of no British players left to choose from.
British players tend to sign early, so we decided to go down a younger route and give opportunities to younger British kids.
We have a coach who worked in college and enjoys teaching and we thought that could be our identity in terms of British players: we’re going to try to nurture.
We established a pathway with the [Kirkcaldy] Kestrels as well – and those players are going to get a look in when they maybe didn’t previously.
The other big challenge, apart from the time constraints, is the team’s reputation from last year – it hurt us a lot.
Arguably, that’s probably one of our biggest challenges because the players we were recruiting would see a team with five wins and wouldn’t exactly be trying to kick our door down to get in.
There’s been a lot of persuading and explaining our vision.
Recruitment has been a huge challenge from our perspective because guys weren’t exactly knocking on our door. It’s a hard job.
‘We’ve put a really good mix together’
You asked if we’re satisfied – I would say yes… hockey is a sport, but it’s also entertainment and we wanted not only characters, but also professional guys.
That’s what we recruited for when we asked for backgrounds and when we did our due diligence, we’ve always looked at what the player is like in the [locker] room, whether they’re respectful, and whether they’re leaders.
I believe that we’ve put a really good mix together and we have achieved our targets from that perspective.
Max Birbraer: ‘We’re not throwing a huge budget at it straight away’
Clearly, last season wasn’t a success for the Flyers – what is your aim for this year?
The aim for this season is very clear.
We’re not saying that we’re going to make the playoffs, [but] what we do want to do is compete for the playoffs. We want to be in the hunt throughout the season and all the way to the end and see what happens.
It’s not a one-year strategy. It’s definitely more of a three-to-five-year plan where we look forward to trying to climb up that ladder.
We’re not throwing a huge budget at it straight away – we want to test the waters and see what the business model is like because it’s still very short notice. Contracts were left there for us to negotiate with suppliers, so we were a bit blind in terms of budgeting and cashflow.
It’s going to be a steady, incremental climb up the standings and the goal for this season is to compete for the playoffs.
Max Birbraer: ‘We’re extremely pleased with Jamie’s work’
I talked with [Coventry Blaze head coach] Kevin Moore yesterday; he spoke really highly of Jamie. How did you land on him as your guy for the head coach role?
Jamie was referred to us by another team in the league.
When his name came up, I then spoke to a couple of other general managers around the league who knew him. From the very moment I was speaking with people, it was just great feedback that kept coming through about how he’d impressed in other conversations.
Once I started talking to him, the main thing is that we just instantly clicked and were on the same page – whether that’s personally, how we want our team to play, and his fit for the role.
He’s done a couple of rebuilds. He’s done a couple of projects where he had to start from scratch and has done that successfully. It was a combination of those factors [that made him our top candidate] and we’re extremely pleased with his work since he joined.
He is completely fulfilling the expectations that we had from the beginning and we look forward to what we can do this season.
Max Birbraer: ‘Really, we have one week of preparations before the Challenge Cup’
In terms of the day-to-day practicalities, the players are now landing in the country, with your training camp to start next week…
Again, everything has been last second. Some of the guys have already come in, that started literally two days ago.
Coach [Jamie] was the first to arrive and I think we should have the full crew here for Sunday, literally hours to go with our official training camp on Monday.
Unfortunately, we’re not going to have a big training camp, with the short notice and visa [processes].
We’re going to have three skates and then play an exhibition match straight away. And then we’ll have another little practice, followed by another exhibition.
Really, we have one week of preparations before the Challenge Cup matches start.
Max Birbraer: ‘We’re going to give people chances’
Did you expect the subject of homegrown players to come up as often as it did at your recent fan forum?
I didn’t mind. I had an idea that something like that would be asked, but I didn’t mind what questions were going to come out because we have nothing to hide.
That’s the whole theme: we want to be as transparent and as open as possible and that was something that we perhaps lacked in the past. We noticed that people were talking about it and wanted to address it.
Max Birbraer, Fife Flyers (Image: Derek Young)
And, as I’ve said, we’ve created a pathway with the Kestrels and the Juniors and we want to see those guys.
And why not? Because we need Brits coming through and there have been examples of that: Brodie Kay is a guy who can play in the Elite League, but you wouldn’t know if he hadn’t been given the chance.
Jamie is happy to have a look at fresh faces and Fife was always known for actually having the homegrown talent that went elsewhere around the country.
We’ve promised our fans that we’ll give young players a chance and that’s what we’ll do.
It’s the same for backroom staff: we’re going to give people chances because the ownership group is quite open-minded and we want to show that.
Max Birbraer: ‘I want us to bring that physical angle’
Finally… how does this version of the Elite League compare to your time with the Cardiff Devils as a player?
It’s definitely different. When I watch recent hockey games, they’re not quite the same and I want to say it’s more that we move on with the times.
I think it’s more professional and it’s more stable – the level of skill is marginally higher and the league is moving in the right direction.
It’s linked to concussions and etcetera, but physicality is probably down. Fights are down.
Nevertheless, I played in that last generation and enjoyed that style of hockey. I think the entertainment element is perhaps a little down and I would like to see more physicality and hard-noise hockey. And that’s what we’re trying to reflect in our line-up.
The difference is definitely there, but I think the sport is moving in the right direction with the times. It’s just that we want to bring that angle into our game as well.
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