Hull Seahawks with no time left to lose in pursuit of NIHL National play-off spot

Wednesday night’s 7-2 home loss to Leeds Knights – Davies’s last game as a player – extended the Seahawks’ losing streak to eight games.

It means that, with 20 regular season games remaining, they embark on today’s long road trip south to face-off against Swindon Wildcats bottom of the standings, 10 points adrift of the eighth and final play-off spot.

Davies hopes his full-time move behind the bench will provide some clarity to the situation and enable his players to focus on returning to the kind of form they showed before the Christmas break which produced a four-game winning streak and – briefly – lifted them off the bottom of the table.

“We have to start playing play-off hockey now,” insisted Davies. “We have to get ourselves in a position where we are ready to fight for every single point we can.

“And we have to start doing that now or this season is going to have a very long end to it with some really, really dark days because when you’re out of the play-off picture early, nobody wants to come and watch and nobody wants to be a part of it – it’s just dead hockey.”

With no chance of him returning to the ice, Davies believes he can focus better on coaxing better performances out of his players.

“It was always going to be tough this season, no matter what has happened on and off the ice,” added Davies.

“But we’ve been flat for the last couple of weeks I feel and we’re struggling with getting back into our rhythm. We seem to have lost confidence and momentum which we’d built up going into the Christmas break.

“The fact is we have to just keep going and with me going behind the bench full-time now that will make things a bit more structured and enable me to give them more direction – that will only help.

“I can see what we’re going to be doing for the next two to three months and going forward into next season, I know what I’m doing and they know what is required of them.”