Home comforts could suit Stingrays

All eight Elite League teams automatically qualify for the post-season, with the first two-legged round only a fortnight away.

With just four regular season games remaining, Stingrays are still hoping to overhaul Newcastle to lift themselves off the foot of the table, with Wednesday night's triumph taking them to within five points of their North East rivals.

George Halkidis opened the scoring for Hull at 3.06 before Konstantin Kalmikov doubled the home side's lead with his 36th goal of the season at 11.35.

Jason Tejchma hit back on the powerplay for Vipers at 19.17 but, just 15 seconds into the second period, man-of-the-match Jason Silverthorn made it 3-1 with his 18th goal of the season. Mike Berry struck at 54.28 on the powerplay to ensure a nervous final five minutes for the Hull, but the home side hung on.

Newcastle visit Hull Arena again on Sunday night, after Stingrays visit Sheffield Steelers for a Yorkshire derby on Saturday.

But, whoever Hull face in the play-offs, player-coach Sylvain Cloutier is confident his side's ability to turn the Arena into something of a fortress recently - something evidenced by six wins in the last eight matches there - could be their ticket through to the play-off finals weekend in Nottingham on April 4-5.

"We want to be hot at home," said Cloutier.

"At the start of the season I said I wanted to make Hull a hard place to come and play but when we were playing with 10 or 11 guys it made it pretty tough to make it difficult for teams who came here.

"But we have picked things up over the last few months and have beaten every team in the league at home and we want to take advantage of that in our home leg in the play-offs."

Stingrays will finish off their regular season campaign on March 20-21 with home games against Cardiff Devils and Steelers.

"We have four games left and we just want to get as many points as we can get and go from there," added Cloutier.

"We are not worried about anyone else, we are just worried about ourselves and getting ready for the play-offs."