Leeds Knights overcome slow start to produce clinical comeback against Peterborough Phantoms

But whatever head coach Ryan Aldridge said to his Leeds Knights team in the first period break on Saturday night as they trailed 3-0 to Peterborough Pahtnoms, it clearly worked.

In the end, the defending NIHL National league and play-off champions produced a clinical 40 minutes of hockey. It wasn’t perfect – at this time of the season nothing rarely is – having hauled themselves back level, they allowed the visitors to retake the lead with a soft goal late in the second period.

But, even then, they moved quickly to cancel the fresh deficit out and level before going in at the second break tied at 4-4. Once they got in front early in the third period for the first time on the night, the rest proved a formality.

For a team now dispossessed of the talents of Cole Shudra, Zach Brooks Jake Wikowski and Thomas Barry, the Knights are doing a pretty good job so far of replicating their start to last season when they went 11 games unbeaten.

Eight more wins are needed to emulate that stunning run and, in all likelihood, it is unlikely to be matched but, three games in, Knights’ fans, even Aldridge, will be happy with the maximum return, one that has them sitting joint-top with Yorkshire rivals Hull Seahawks, who return to action on Sunday night at home to Telford Tigers, and Milton Keynes Lightning and, maybe somewhat surprisingly, Bees IHC.

The only other team to enjoy a perfect start are Bees, a team who missed out on the play-offs last year but who steamrollered Bristol Pitbulls 7-2 on Saturday night, to add to equally-impressive wins against Telford Tigers and Peterborough Phantoms and match the Knights’ three-from-three record.

The Knights travel to Slough on Sunday to face-off against Dominik Gabaj’s team, so something will have to give.

"I thought we started the game very flat, I thought we were flat in warm-up although the boys thought they were flying,” said Aldridge. “We didn’t respond, we knew we had to get the crowd behind us and we didn’t.

"We took some silly penalties in that first period, penalties in bad areas of the ice we didn’t need to take. We weren’t ourselves in that first period, we were somewhere else but, in the end, we found a way.”

Ahead of Sunday’s road trip, Aldridge added: “Bracknell ran a score up in Bristol on Saturday night so they are a team that’s flying right now and we haven’t played well in Bracknell ever since I’ve been here, we always struggle, so we’ve got to go and grind a road win out.”

It looked early on as if the Knights would have to surrender their 100 per cent start to the league campaign, rightly trailing to goals from Lukas Sladkovsky and Martins Susters (2).

Crucially, no doubt stinging from an earful in the locker room off Aldridge, the Knights got back in the game early on in the second, when Matt Barron fired home on the rebound at 21.47 after Jordan Marr spilled Kieran Brown’s initial shot.

The Knights captain then fired through traffic – aided by a good screen from Josh Adkins - to make it a one-goal game at 28.42, the comeback complete when Barron doubled his tally from the bottom of the right circle at 38.36 after good set-up work behind the net from Brown.

Just over a minute later, though, the Knights then switched off, allowing Jarvis Hunt to roam free and score unchecked from close range, although the Phantoms’ joy was even more short-lived than the Knights a few moments earlier, a drive down centre ice from Mac Howlett seeing the puck eventually bobble free to Matt Haywood to rifle home from close range to make it 4-4 with just three seconds of the period remaining.

After such a breath-taking conclusion to the second, the Knights then took control early in the third, Adkins showing quick-thinking to pounce on a loose puck close in to give the Knights the lead for the first time on the night at 43.02.

Only 25 more seconds had elapsed when Adkins turned provider for Brown’s second of the game, but it wasn’t until late on that the points were made safe, Oli Endicott capping a typically-bustling, energetic performance with a fine finish from the left circle to make it 7-4, Howlett also getting on the board with an empty-netter to complete another fine night’s work.