Leeds Knights 2: Tough times but positives taken from debut NIHL North One season
THE END, when it came, may have been harsh but Davey Lawrence believes there were plenty of positives to take from Leeds Knights 2’s first-ever competitive season.
Formed last summer to provide a bridge from junior hockey to the successful Leeds Knights team in NIHL National, it was always going to be a tough baptism of fire one tier below in NIHL North One for head coach Davey Lawrence and his players.
After putting a team together last summer - a combination of triallists and junior players coming through the system at Leeds Junior Knights - the Knights would come up against seasoned teams at this level, the likes of Billingham Stars, Blackburn Hawks and Solihull Barons.
As expected with a largely young, inexperienced team, there were a number of tough nights for Knights 2, but they saved their best until the last in terms of the regular season, coming back from 3-0 down in a final-day, must-win game against Nottingham Lions to book their place in the play-offs.
They were to fall at the first hurdle when they came up against league and cup champions and top seeds Billingham, who emulated their convincing regular season wins over the Knights with two more victories in the quarter-finals.
A 10-1 home loss in the first leg had the Knights staring at an early exit and, despite winning 3-2 at the end of the first period in the second leg, the Stars continued their dominance in a 12-14 triumph, going through 22-5 on aggregate.
As hard as that heavy defeat will have been to stomach last weekend, Lawrence prefers to look at the bigger picture of the whole season and how far the team have come since that first game against Hull Jets back in early September.
“It looks good for the future,” insisted Lawrence. “We made the play-offs in our first season, we’ve probably had 7-10 players come through from our juniors and we’ve had 5-6 of them train with us regularly and 2-3 who have played.
“So if you look at it from that point of view it has been a successful season. We’ve also had 2-3 guys who have played in the Knights NIHL National team this season on a regular basis.
“With us being such a young team, we’ve only had 2-3 guys who have played at that level before, so it was a real learning curve, because they’re so inexperienced.
“I think we did alright, by making the play-offs, we reached our target.
“Next year we’ll hopefully push on even more, but we have to keep in mind what the main aim of this team is to get players from the junior team up into the Knights NIHL National team.”
Crucially, added Lawrence, he believes the 2024-25 season has proved there is now a pathway for younger players.
“Going forward, it’s important for younger players to see that that pathway is now there from top to bottom,” he added. “That actually if you work hard and want to achieve it, you can do it - it’s not a hidden thing, it’s quite open and it’s there and if you want it.”
Of the two games that brought the curtain down on his team’s season, Lawrence admitted it was always going to be a tough ask against Billingham.
“I think we expected it on some level,” he said. “Billingham are an experienced side and have been together for 6-7 years so they had that advantage.
“For us it was more about making a show of ourselves and doing some little things right which we did at times.”