Stingrays in search of close encounters of the winning kind

The East Yorkshire club were edged out of the post-season picture last season, finishing two points behind Gardiner Conference winners Braehead Clan and, as a result, bottom of the overall Elite League standings. Had they won their conference, it would have meant a third-place overall finish and progression to the play-offs.

Losing 17 league games by the odd goal is what ultimately cost Hull dearly last time out, 10 of them coming in their own conference of which seven were in shoot-outs.

Veteran forward Silverthorn, now in his fifth season at Hull and his eighth overall in the UK’s top flight, said the crushing disappointment at missing out on the play-offs is serving as a telling motivation to avoid a similar fate this time around.

“It was a terrible feeling last season,” said Silverthorn, whose team host Edinburgh Capitals at Hull Arena tonight (6.30pm). “We had a lot of one-goal defeats and shoot-out losses and that’s all the difference was.

“We have to be able to take points from every game. It just takes that little bit of extra focus and extra bit of effort from the boys and we’ll get there.”

Hull went down 4-3 at Sheffield Steelers in the Challenge Cup on Wednesday night and will hope to pick up their first points in Group B when they travel to Coventry Blaze tomorrow.

Silverthorn, who has two goals and four assists from Stingrays’ three games, said there were plenty of positives to take into the weekend following their one-goal reverse at Ice Sheffield.

“You always take positives out of games like that – the Steelers are a very good team who will be challenging for the league again,” he added. “You never just want to dwell on the fact that you’ve lost, you want to make sure that you move on and improve.”

Edinburgh arrive in Hull looking for their first win of the season, but both Silverthorn and his coach Sylvain Cloutier expect nothing other than a tough night against a team who regularly impressed last season under player-coach Richard Hartmann last season.

“I think Edinburgh will be as strong as last year, definitely,” said Cloutier, who felt his team’s display at Sheffield on Wednesday was their besst of the season so far.

“Some of their players have arrived later, but they’ll be settling in and Richard coaches them really well. We’re at home, but we’re going to have on our ‘A’ game if we want to take both points.”

Defeat in Sheffield left Hull without a win in their three Cup group games, with Cloutier keen for his team to end that sequence in Coventry.

“I think we qualified from the group with six points last season,” added the 39-year-old Canadian centre.

“The other teams are going to take points off each other, we still have five games left - three of them at home - so if we can get to six points it might be enough again. We need something from Coventry though.”