Hull denied once again by Devils

Cardiff remain the only team Hull have failed to beat this season, suffering six defeats in seven games with the other meeting ending in a a 3-3 Challenge Cup draw on the opening night of the season last October.

Cardiff - still hopeful of chasing down Sheffield Steelers for the regular season league title - head to the Hull Arena for the last meeting of the season between the two sides on Saturday week.

Before they arrived at the intimidating Cardiff Bay Arena, Hull were already up against it with defencemen Craig Mitchell and Aivars Gaisins, top goalscorer Jereme Tendler and the British forward pair Ryan Lake and Ben Lowe all missing due to a combination of injury, illness and work commitments.

Their hopes of getting out of the opening period in decent shape, however, were severely hit, when they found themselves three goals down before the first break.

First to find a way past netminder Christian Boucher was Max Birbraer, who fired home on the powerplay at 9.48. Jon Pelle then doubled the home side’s advantage just under five minutes later before Scott Matzka made it 3-0 at 19.01.

Tyler Michel scored Cardiff’s fourth at 27.53 and that is how it stayed until five minutes into the third period when Birbraer grabbed his second of the night.

Ryan Finnerty made it 6-0 in the 53rd minute, but Hull - who were out-shot 48-18 on the night - finally got on the board through Konstantin Kalmikov’s third goal in as many games two minutes later.

While acknowledging his team would always struggle with so many key men missing, player-coach Sylvain Cloutier was still far from happy after his side’s 27th league defeat of the campaign.

“Yes we were missing a few guys but you still have to compete and do the little things right,” said Cloutier. “Guys tried to do too much by themselves.

“It is frustrating because we know we can play a lot better than that. Bouch (netminder Christian Boucher) made some great saves but we let him down a bit too.

“But we have never had a good game in Cardiff. That’s 29 goals we have conceded in four games here. It has not been the best place for us this year.”