Leeds Chiefs plan to be surprise package for hosts Peterborough Phantoms

He then spent two successful years at Hull Pirates before switching to Leeds this summer.

“I’ve played under Slava and I know how well-drilled they are as a team,” said Archer. “Slava looks into everything and is very thorough.

"We’ll have our work cut out, I know, but it would be excellent to come out of there with that first win if we can. I do feel like the win is coming though.

"We’ve been in games close apart from the MK scoreline - which was nowhere near reflecting how well we actually played, for two periods anyway, in the third period we kind of got away from our gameplan and shipped a few goals in the last 10 minutes.

"We just need to close a game out. The teams we’ve played so far, I feel we should have taken something from all four games so far. I feel that once we get that one win, others will come."

The Phantoms sit sixth in the NIHL National table having won two of their five games so far – both victories coming on home ice, with a third straight road defeat coming on Saturday when they were downed 5-2 by Basingstoke Bison.

Player-coach Sam Zajac expects Koulikov's side to come out flying on Sunday evening, but believes a similar approach employed by Telford two weeks ago will enable them to be prepared for that.

"We know they are going to come hard at us, probably in a similar way to how Telford played against us a couple of weeks ago," said Zajac.

"Everybody knows Peterborough’s rink is a horrible place to go. You’ve got be mentally prepared to go into that rink and battle. That is what we are expecting and we spoke to the players at practice about it being a tough intimidating atmosphere

"If things don’t go your way, it’s loud and the fans get on you - they are relentless. But we’ve looked good this week in training and we know what they are going to bring and we may still be a bit of a surprise package somewhat to them."