Hull Seahawks take opening night honours with derby road win at Leeds Knights

It was a sweet moment for the visitors and their travelling fans, the last time the two sides having met being the play-off final back in April when the Knights produced a late comeback to win 5-3 and crush Hull’s hopes of a first piece of silverware.

Hull were good value for their ‘revenge’ win having taken a 2-0 lead in the first period and then made life difficult for the Knights to find a way back into the game.

They did eventually breach a Seahawks defence marshalled well by the experienced Jason Hewitt when Edgars Vengis forced home a rebound in the 55th minute on the power play.

But that was as good as it got for Ryan Aldridge’s team who head to Milton Keynes Lightning on Saturday.

Hull are afforded a day off before opening up their home schedule on Sunday against Solway.

It initially looked ominous for Hull when they found themselves on a 5-on-3 penalty kill less than 80 seconds in, first being handed a too many men call before Johnny Corneil was sent to the box for delay of game just five seconds later.

But they were able to come out the other side of the penalty kill unscathed and went on to take the lead on the 10-minute mark when young Beau Reeder robbed the puck off Bailey Perre before firing over Sam Gospel’s left shoulder and into the far corner of the net.

It got even better for the Seahawks just over three minutes later when they doubled their lead.

Corneil won the face-off in the right circle, feeding Josh Hodgkinson whose shot through traffic could only be parried by Gospel into the path of Corneil who lifted the rebounding puck into the roof of the net.

Captain Kieran Brown tried to get the hosts going when he chose a fight with Dylan Hehir in the 17th minute, taking exception at his former team-mate drilling Jonas Bennett into the boards in the Seahawks’ zone.

But as much as they huffed and puffed, the Knights couldn’t find a way past Aleksanteri Heiskanen in a game pock-marked throughout by penalties.

It was one one of those penalties - a tripping call on Hull’s Owen Bruton - that Leeds finally capitalised, good work by Cullen McLean seeing his wraparound effort fall kindly to Vengis to prod home to make it a one-goal game at 54.42.

They got another opportunity on the man advantage shortly after when Dylan Hehir was sent to the box for abuse of officials but there was no way through on that occasion, the visitors seeing the game out in an impressive performance on the road.