Leeds Knights: Opportunity knocks twice to take sting out of NIHL National rivals Bees

While Leeds Knights’ head coach Ryan Aldridge agrees that facing just one opponent across a weekend has its benefits, he still has to prepare his players for contrasting scenarios.

Last weekend saw the Knights face the same prospect, when taking on Peterborough Phantoms home and away.

To their credit, their emerged with all four points without allowing their opponents to take anything from an intensely competitive 120 minutes, the Knights following up Saturday night’s 5-2 win at home with a 7-4 win in Peterborough 24 hours later.

This weekend, it is the turn of Bees IHC to try and stop the early-season juggernaut that is the Knights, who will hope to come out of the next 48 hours with their 100 per cent start to the season still intact.

Milton Keynes remain the only other team to match the Knights, the two meeting for the first time at Elland Road Ice Arena on Sunday, October 23.

“It’s a little bit easier, having just the one opponent to prepare for, but they will - like last weekend - be two different hockey games,” said Aldridge ahead of tonight’s first encounter against the Bees at home (face-off 6.30pm).

“You are talking about the same group of players when you’re doing your pre-scout and everything and we’re going to play a pretty similar way this weekend to how we did last Saturday and Sunday.

“So, like last weekend, Saturday will be a completely different game to the one on Sunday.”

Often seen as perennial strugglers, the Bees scraped into the play-offs last season and have had a mixed start to their campaign this time around, their 6-3 win at home Basingstoke Bison sandwiched by losses to Peterborough and Milton Keynes.

As with the Phantoms last weekend, Aldridge expects another two tough nights, a situation he doesn’t see changing throughout the entire season.

“On any given night, you have to be on your guard,” said Aldridge. “It’s a good league this year and the quality is probably more spread out than it has been before. There are no easy games and anyone who takes any game lightly, is a little bit deluded in my book.”