Leeds Knights owner Steve Nell on the first 12 months and his plans for the 2022-23 NIHL National season

Taking over the franchise from rink owners Planet Ice towards the end of April last year, Nell was aware of the potential on and off the ice for the team.

Within six months, he realised he had underestimated that potential, even more so by January, the Knights average attendance through February and March coming in at around the 1,500 mark.

Not bad for a debut season, especially when you can also boast of three sellout crowds at the 2,200 capacity Elland Road rink. There was no silverware, but that wasn’t expected or demanded by the 55-year-old, although they did come very, very close before having to settle for runners-up in the Autumn Cup, losing out to Nell’s ‘other’ team, the Swindon Wildcats.

It is his time as owner of the Wiltshire club since 2004 – he stepped down as GM there when he bought Leeds – that Nell has regularly drawn on.

The main difference is the scale of what is possible at the Knights.

On the ice, Nell was also happy with what he saw.

A blazing start in the Autumn Cup group phase under head coach Dave Whistle carried over briefly into the league schedule until injuries began to bite, those suffered by goaltender Sam Gospel and forwards Cole Shudra and Matty Davies felt most keenly.

Thereafter consistency, or lack of it, was often an issue but when Nell decided to make a coaching change in mid-January it came as a genuine shock.

Whistle was asked to stay on as GM, but he wanted to remain behind the bench and so the two went their separate ways.

Ryan Aldridge came in, the players responded well but while a fourth-place regular season finish was an impressive achievement, the toll of playing short-benched so often eventually took its toll when the intensity of the play-offs arrived, the Knights failing to win any of their six group games.

It was a miserable end to the season, no doubt, but there were no complaints from Nell.

“Our key players were playing far too much and you can only keep that going for so long,” he said. “In the end, it caught up with us. Maybe if we’d beat Milton Keynes or the Bees at home it would have gone differently, but I couldn’t fault the players for what they had given. It was just a step too far.”

As a result, a deeper roster will be in place next season and once the permanent coaching position is filled for 2021-22 – it’s expected an announcement will be made in the next week or so – more names will be added to the two players already signed in goaltender Sam Gospel and forward Kieran Brown.

“We were short-benched too often and paid for it, but that is something we intend to put right this season,” added Nell. “We’d like to have a roster of 18 skaters and a couple of goalies, so around the 20 or so mark, we need more depth and we’ll be adding a couple of imports too.”

Although a number of lessons will no doubt have been learned, there are no regrets from Nell over his first year in charge, even when it came to making one of the biggest calls of the season over his man behind the bench.

“Dave ended up moving on and we brought in Ryan and that worked well,” said Nell. “It’s never easy when you make changes like that but it was the right thing to do and I’m very happy we made it.”

Overall, says Nell, the challenge of taking on Leeds has been met, building a solid foundation for further growth to take place on and off the ice over the next 12 months.

“I was looking for a new challenge and I was looking to do something special and when Leeds came up it seemed the natural thing to do,” added Nell, who last week appointed a new managing director in Warwick Andrews. “For me, there are nothing but positives to come out of this year and I’m really pleased that I took the team on.

“Yes, we’ve got the template from running Swindon, it’s just that everything is bigger in Leeds – there’s more seats, it’s a bigger city, more fans – we know what we need to do. Now we just need to do it quicker in Leeds than we did it in Swindon and I’m confident we’ll do that.

“Silverware is always nice, of course it is, but next season, progression is what we need and what we’re looking for more than anything else – both on and off the ice. The only demand from me from a playing point of view is that everybody gives everything every night – and I’m sure the fans will respect and appreciate that.”