Leeds Knights have learned the lessons from previous big-game setbacks as they head to play-off finals weekend as favourites

Heading into Saturday’s NIHL National play-off semi-final against Telford Tigers, the league champions will rightly be viewed by many as favourites to make Sunday’s final.

There, many in this part of the country hope, will possibly await Sheffield Steeldogs, who are pitted against Raiders IHC in the first semi-final at Coventry’s SkyDome Arena.

An all-Yorkshire final is a mouth-watering prospect between teams where there is little love lost.

But Aldridge knows there is a massive hurdle to overcome before they can even think about what may or may not happen on Sunday.

It would have been easy for the Knights to take their foot off the gas since clinching the regular season crown but, if anything, they have just increased their output.

Aside from a 7-5 defeat at runners-up Milton Keynes Lightning, the Knights have won six of the seven games since that memorable night in Telford on March 19 when they discovered they were to be champions.

In five of those games, they have scored five or more.

In last weekend’s quarter-final against a Basingstoke Bison team reeling from news earlier in the week that they wouldn’t be returning to compete in the 2023-24 season, Aldridge was concerned which Knights team would turn up in the first leg - the one who had put nine goals past Milton Keynes the previous weekend or the one that effectively handed the National Cup to Peterborough Phantoms with a 6-0 capitulation in the first leg of the final on March 17.

He needn’t have worried.

The Knights produced an at-times mesmerising performance that reinforced everything about why they had been the team to catch for the majority of the season.

Carrying an 11-2 margin of victory down to Hampshire on the Sunday was no more than they deserved, Aldridge’s players sealing the tie with a more conservative 4-2 win in an aggregate 15-4 triumph.

But another weekend brings an altogether different challenge.

“My main concern going into that Bison quarter was that it was a case of which Leeds Knights team would come out - with it being such a big occasion and pressure hockey,” said Aldridge. “But I thought they were phenomenal from the first puck drop.

“We talked beforehand about making sure we played like we do as a team and they were just great.

“To be honest, I think we could have beat anybody in the league by that score the way we played on Saturday night, it just happened to be Basingstoke, who were the poor team that faced them that night.”

In front of a crowd packed with fans of all persuasions in Coventry, the Knights again have to prove they can deal with the pressure big games bring.

“Are we a different team than we were at the start of this season? 100 per cent we are,” said Aldridge. “Have we learned from the mistakes that we’ve made this year? I think we have. “I think the hunger is still there and that’s just another thing to prove this weekend. We’ve got to prove that we can play in those big games when it matters. As individuals and as a team we’ve got to prove that one game (6-0 loss to Peterborough) was a mistake and that we lost that Cup final, we weren’t beaten, we lost it.

“We might have missed out on the cup but, as an organisation, that defeat probably taught us some good lessons. Hopefully, that will help us out this weekend.”