Leeds Knights finally deliver the kind of performance coach Ryan Aldridge was looking for

The 44-year-old acknowledges that he is sometimes hard to please, the kind of coach forever seeking a fully-committed 60-minute performance from his players.

Heading into last weekend, it was something he felt they hadn’t yet achieved, a comment which may surprise some fans given the Knights have led the way all season in the NIHL National standings.

On Saturday, however, against the Raiders IHC, he got what he had been looking for.

Aldridge had called for a fast start from his players, feeling that they owed home fans a big performance, in part because of their first loss on home ice the previous weekend when they were edged out 3-2 after a shoot-out against defending champions Telford Tigers.

Watching his team come in at the first period break 5-0 to the good against Raiders, then, must have been extremely satisfying for Aldridge. What will have given him even more pleasure, though, was the fact they maintained their level of performance – if not goalscoring – eventually running out 8-0 winners.

Throw in a first shutout of the season for netminder Sam Gospel and a come-from-behind 6-1 win at Hull Seahawks the following night and it is easy to understand why Aldridge was so pleased come Monday morning.

“Saturday night against Raiders was the best we’ve played all year, everybody played for the full 60 minutes,” said Alridge.

“It was the kind of performance I felt we’d been lacking and I just feel we’ve often had one line going and not the other but, on Saturday, the way the goals were spread around, I thought those top two lines were being positive for each other and that bench was a good place to be.”

The first 20 minutes in Hull the following night saw the Knights second-best in most areas, something which Aldridge wasn’t totally surprised about, but which he was keen to address during the first intermission.

It clearly worked, the Knights scoring three unanswered goals in each of the following two periods.

"Can you realistically play two games on a weekend like the one we played on Saturday? Probably not, so we had a lull in that first period in Hull,” added Aldridge. “We weren’t great but they were good and playing with confidence.

“And we just had a different feeling on the bench from the night before, it was more like we were walking on egg shells and it felt like we were gripping our sticks too tightly.

"So we had a word about that after that first period, about the way we were playing and they went back out and we got the response that we were looking for.”