Hull Seahawks need to, and can, win out to reach play-off finals, insists Matty Davies

After losing out twice to Yorkshire rivals Leeds Knights, the Seahawks are in must-win territory heading into their weekend double-header against Bees IHC.

Win their remaining four Group A games and they will make it to Coventry for the Final Four Weekend on April 27-28.

It is the same for both teams, the Bees also find themselves pointless having come off second-best in back-to-back games against Peterborough Phantoms, who sit level on points with the Knights.

Seahawks’ coach Matty Davies was keen to draw on the positives of his team’s performance in Sunday’s 6-3 defeat at home, one he felt was much improved on the one they gave 48 hours earlier when they were hammered 8-3 in Leeds.

He also knows further improvements need to come this weekend if his team are to stand any chance of keeping their hopes alive of making it to the SkyDome Arena.

“It was a tough couple of nights,” said Davies after back-to-back losses against the regular season champions. “They are a good team and if you’re not right on it that is what they can do to you.

“That team (Leeds) are young, hungry and relentless and if you give them chances, they will take them. Clinical is what they were over the two games.

“But the good thing about this format is that we can just about get away with a weekend like we’ve just had. We have to win now, it really is as simple as that.

“It’s all about the pressure of having to win and knowing we have to win.

“If we’d won Sunday then we could afford one more game but now we know that we need to win - end of.

“Of course I’d like to have come out of the weekend with two points, but we just have to move on.”

The Seahawks found themselves chasing the game in front of their own fans after two first-period strikes from Matt Barron, a two-goal lead enhanced by Mac Howlett’s power play strike in the 22nd minute.

Every time the Seahawks came up with a response, thereafter, the Knights had one of their own, none more so than just after the halfway point when Dec Balmer’s long-range strike gave the home team hopes of a comeback, only for it to be snuffed out when Jordan Buesa applied a back-hand finish into the roof of the net just 30 seconds later.

It was a similar story in the third period, Finlay Ulrick’s back-post finish just 52 seconds in being cancelled out by Kieran Brown’s exquisite finish on a breakaway five minutes later.

Owen Sobchak reduced the deficit to two again with a smart back-hand strike with just over six minutes remaining and the Knights needed netminder Sam Gospel to be at his best on at least three occasions in the following minutes until Buesa’s empty-net marker sealed the deal.

“I felt we played well,” added Davies. “Yes, we made some errors, we gave the puck away in some bad areas but, generally, I felt we played well and we stayed in the game until late on - on another night, we could have easily won that game.

“We just need to remember that we’re a good team and that we can beat teams and we can beat them well. We’ve done that all season.“And we need to go into this weekend with that in mind. It’s pretty straightforward - we haven’t got time to sulk or feel sorry for ourselves, we’ve got to turn it around

quickly and turn up and make sure that we don’t waste any time being frustrated.

“I know we’ve got it in that room to do it, we can win four games.

“We’ve beaten both Peterborough and Bees this season before. Yes, it’s going to be tough to win four games, for sure, but if we want to go to Coventry we’ve got to do it and I believe we can.”

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