Hull critics can spur Stingrays towards play-offs, says Campbell

The Yorkshire club currently occupy the eighth and final play-off position in the standings, with Dundee Stars and Fife Flyers beneath - both now eight points back following the latter’s 4-3 win at Braehead Clan on Wednesday night.

The Stingrays enter a hugely significant weekend on the back of just one win in six, first welcoming Dundee to Hull Arena before making the trip to Edinburgh Capitals, who sit one place and three points above them in the table.

It has been a hugely disappointing campaign so far for Sylvain Cloutier’s team, who started the season full of optimism and intent on a top-six finish.

But with 10 weeks of the season remaining, the Stingrays find themselves embroiled in a four-way battle to clinch one of the last two play-off spots.

The team has come in for increased criticism in recent weeks – most notably after the abysmal 7-4 defeat to Braehead at home two weeks ago – but Campbell, one of the team’s most consistent performers since his arrival last summer, is hoping the recent harsh words can sting his team-mates into action in order to prove those critics wrong.

“We had high expectations at the start of the season,” said Campbell. “We haven’t lived up to those, however, and that is what is most disappointing for me.

“I’ve heard what some people had to say about us – particularly after the Braehead game. I don’t like hearing it, but the results do speak for themselves.

“I would love us to go out over these next 20 games or so and prove those people who have been criticising us wrong.

“I still believe that we have got a good team and we need to prove that in the next few weeks. The guys here have a lot of pride in this club and we should use the criticism we have had as motivation to start picking things up.”

Saturday night is being billed by the club as the biggest game of the season so far – a win for Hull would put them 10 points clear of Dundee. But an equally-important game follows 24 hours later when Cloutier takes his players to seventh-placed Edinburgh, the team they desperately want to overhaul in the standings and who have won just once in their last 10 games.

Although the greater emphasis is being placed on the home clash with Dundee – which sees former Stingrays forward Lee Mitchell make his first return to the club where he played for six seasons - Campbell is confident Hull will have plenty left in the tank for the trip to Scotland.

“You can only really focus on the next game ahead of you,” he added. “We’ll throw all our energies into the Dundee game and then we can start thinking about what we have to do the following night in Edinburgh.

“It is a big weekend for us and we do need to make sure we peg Dundee back in their place because we don’t want to give them any hope or confidence that they can catch us.

“But it will just be as big for them, so we have to make sure we seize the momentum and use the big crowd we hope we’re getting, because that can sometimes be a big advantage.”

Defenceman and captain Kurtis Dulle returns to the Hull line-up after a brief trip back to North American for a family commitment, but fellow D-man James Pease, the club’s general manager who has played the last few games, is missing with a knee injury.