Leeds Knights v Hull Seahawks: Older, wiser, deeper Knights better-placed to deal with whatever NIHL National play-offs throw at them

Having finished fourth in the regular season standings, they found themselves in a group with Milton Keynes Lightning, Telford Tigers and Bees IHC. They lost all six games.

Of a Knights’ roster that had no imports and that played through that post-season, only five players remain in the current line-up – Lewis Baldwin, Kieran Brown, Sam Gospel, Jordan Griffin and Ethan Hehir.

Suffice to say, two years on, the Knights are an altogether different beast – older, wiser, more mature and boasting three high-quality imports. Oh, and they are the reigning play-off champions, too.

Head coach Ryan Aldridge was in charge in the Spring of 2022, too, but at that point it still wasn’t clear whether he was going to return the following season, having only stepped in behind the bench in January to replace Dave Whistle.

As everyone knows, Aldridge did stick around, going on to lead the Knights to a league and play-off double 12 months later.

This season, they are halfway to repeating that stunning triumph having already wrapped up the league title, again with a couple of weeks to spare.

Two years ago, Aldridge cites the lack of depth coupled with the general mental and physical fatigue that seeped through the Knights’ roster as the main reason behind their post-season struggles. They had nothing more to give when it came to the play-offs.

They enter the first weekend of the current post-season with a home-and-away double-header against Hull Seahawks – the first encounter taking place at Elland Road Ice arena tonight. They are determined to experience that winning feeling at Coventry’s Skydome Arena again.

“Even when you look back at the team photo from that year, you can see how young the boys are – they are still young now, obviously – but back then they were really young,” recalls Aldridge.

“And the lack of depth in the line-up was another factor – there were maybe 15 or 16 people in the whole team and there were no imports either. And I think that year, more than anything, they were as much mentally tired as they were physically tired.

“There was so much uncertainty as to what was going on at that point, too, I think it was just too much for everybody to handle at such a young age.

“Am I worried about the boys being tired? Probably not this year – they are two years older, wiser and more successful and that counts for a lot going into something like this.”

As well as Hull, the Knights find themselves up against Peterborough Phantoms and Bees IHC in Group A.

While many fans would love league bosses to take the plunge and somehow find a way to stage a play-off best-of series format - like most other leagues around the world - the group format at least provides teams with a chance of overcoming any bad start to the post-season they may have.

One bad night, even one bad weekend does not mean elimination. Last year, Leeds hammered Basingstoke Bison 11-2 in the first leg of their play-off quarter-final and it was game over.

Regardless of the format, though, Aldridge believes his players are well-placed to emulate last year’s double triumph.

“There is a sense of pride in retaining the play-off title, like there was with the league,” he added.

“I think it will have helped having the last couple of weekends to separate them - we haven’t been fighting for the title the last couple of weeks, we’d already wrapped that up and I think that’s probably done us a favour, have a bit of a break from the grind.

“But the next four weeks are big. First of all we want to get to Coventry, that’s our first goal and then we’ll think about the next goal after that - first we need to put in three solid weekends in and get ourselves there.”