Hull Seahawks v Leeds Knights - Ryan Aldridge demanding positive reaction from wounded Knights

The Knights came off second-best against the Seahawks on home ice on Friday when goals from Finlay Ulrick (2), Nathan Salem and Bobby Chamberlain saw the visitors seal a first-ever competitive win over their hosts.

The two meet again at Hull Ice Arena on Saturday night (5.30pm) where a second successive win for the hosts would take them to within four points of the Knights.

The Seahawks were good value for the points in their 4-2 victory at Leeds, but Aldridge felt his players were also the architects of their own downfall. He wants to see a much-improved performance on the road.

“We need to have a reaction,” said Aldridge. “We played too much tonight in ones and twos and not in fours and fives, like we need to be.

“We need to regroup and have another go. We didn’t deserve to win – some of our guys just weren’t good enough.”

Knights’ captain Kieran Brown said he welcomed the opportunity to set the record straight so soon after a disappointing derby defeat.

“It was a good game - physical, fast and I feel like Hull maybe wanted it a little bit more than we did,” he said. “But we’ve got a quick chance to go into their building and redeem ourselves.

“We’ve come together after the game, gone through what we did wrong and right and we’re going to go there and try and put it right.

“I think sometimes people have underestimated Hull, but they are a very good team. They’ve got a good coach behind their bench and I reckon they are going to do well this year - they’ve certainly given us one of our biggest tests so far this season.”

Seahawks coach Matty Davies is prepared for some kind of backlash from the Knights, who can ill-afford to give up any more ground on leaders Milton Keynes Lightning.

“It’s going to be a tough, tough game, they’ll come and they will want that back,” said Davies. “And we'll have to work hard and do the job we’ve done tonight again in front of our own fans.

“A lot of our fans made the journey over and our lads did them proud. We need to do the same again at ours.”