Leeds Knights boss Ryan Aldridge's delight over big 'turning point' in NIHL National title race
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At 3-0 down after just 12 minutes in their latest derby against Sheffield Steeldogs, things looked very bleak indeed for the visitors.
It seemed - even at that early stage - that the hosts would end their near two-year wait for a win over the Knights
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Hide AdFast forward 90 minutes or so, however, and Ben Morgan and his players were still left waiting to celebrate two points over their local rivals after the Knights produced a stunning response to their situation.
Head coach Aldridge believes the way his players dealt with such adversity could prove a significant turning point for their campaign.
He feels the 7-3 win at Ice Sheffield also instilled the kind of boost to their self-belief that also helped them get past title rivals Swindon Wildcats two nights later in Leeds.
The hope is that confidence can also help them get over the line this coming weekend against the other threat to their hopes of a third successive league crown, Milton Keynes Lightning.
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With 14 games remaining, Tim Wallace’s team hold a slender one-point advantage over the Knights. Four are at stake on this double-header weekend.
With a third and final trip to Milton Keynes to follow for the Knights - on March 15 - and with the leaders also to travel to Swindon on February 15, nothing will have been decided come Sunday evening.
But a maximum return either way will strike a significant blow.
For Aldridge, the whole weekend was about how his team dealt with adversity.
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“We were 3-0 down in Sheffield but I’ve had this smile on my face and everybody thinks I’m mad,” said Aldridge. “The thing was though, at 3-0 down, that was the most positive our team has been all year.
“Instead of falling apart they came together and I just knew we were not going to lose that game, even at 3-0 down.
“We just had a mentality on the bench that gave us that belief.
“It was like ‘let’s just calm down here, let’s find our feet, everything is okay’.
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Hide Ad“I loved the way the boys came together that night. Even if we had lost that game, I would have been happy because the boys came together and I loved it. It was a massive positive for us at this stage of the season.
“That was a massive turning point for us and it was like two years ago in that it felt like we were never going to lose games.
“When we go 3-0 up we play some beautiful hockey. When we went 3-0 down, we played some beautiful hockey and that gave us confidence going into the Swindon game, too.”
Once again, in front of their own fans, the Knights had to come from behind.
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Hide AdTomasz Malasinski was the man to break the deadlock, set free down the middle before beating Sam Gospel one-on-one with 23.15 on the clock.
It silenced the Knights’ faithful, but only briefly as they hit back just 18 seconds later when captain Kieran Brown saw space open up ahead of him thanks to Matt Bissonnette’s timely decoy before firing past Renny Marr into the bottom right-hand corner.
The Knights got ahead on the power play just five minutes later, Marr unable to hold on to Brown’s shot from the right circle, the puck falling kindly to Matt Barron to jab home from close range.
Four minutes later, Mac Howlett exchanged passes with Bow Neely on the right before driving towards centre ice and beating Marr over his left shoulder from 10 yards out.
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Hide AdAs expected, Swindon pushed back hard in the third and were rewarded when Sam Godfrey’s shot through traffic from distance was saved by Gospel, only for the puck to fall kindly for Reed Sayers, who fired the rebound home at 46.02.
It made for a tense conclusion, something that was only eased when - as Swindon desperately looked for an equaliser - the puck fell to Jordan Buesa, who took his time to fire it into the empty net from inside his own zone to make it 4-2.