Leeds Knights coach Ryan Aldridge hails 'unbelievable' team after shootout loss to Milton Keynes Lightning

Leading 2-0 with just under five minutes to go at Elland Road Ice Arena on Sunday evening, it looked like the defending regular season champions were home and dry for a four-point weekend.

But, in the end, they had to settle for ‘just’ the three, the Lightning scoring twice – their equaliser from Dillon Lawrence with just 19 seconds of regulation remaining – before their player-coach Tim Wallace snatched the extra point in the fifth round of the shoot-out that eventually followed.

Wallace’s ability to beat netminder Sam Gospel with the last meaningful strike of an absorbing contest meant the Knights swapped places with their Buckinghamshire rivals and now sit one place beneath them in second, having played one game more.

As if to emphasis how well Yorkshire clubs have started the 2024-25 campaign, Hull Seahawks are next in line, a point adrift with a game in hand, while Sheffield Steeldogs – who bounced back from an 8-2 pounding in East Yorkshire with a 6-1 home win over Solway Sharks on Sunday – are fourth, three points off the Knights having plagued a game less.

While there will have been disappointment among the Knights players and some of their fans not to have taken both points on Sunday – particularly given the encouraging position they were in after 55 minutes – there was only praise and a reality check from their head coach.

Aldridge has not been slow to be critical of his players this season, even after relatively comfortable wins but, in defeat, he recognised the contribution his team had made to “a great game of hockey.”

“I think we deserved to win,” said Aldridge. “They (Lightning) are a good hockey team and for anyone sat in the stands watching, I thought it was a great game of hockey.

“It’s the best game we’ve played as a team since the last time they were in our building. So we’ve got to take the positives. I said to the boys that we cannot be down about that because it was the best game we’d played in a long, long time.

“We’ve won so much in the last two years, we’ve maybe lost that hunger? Or it’s just a bit hard to get going again? But we’ve just got to find a way through it.

“They are a young group who have been phenomenal for the last two years and we’ve just got to stick with it and (on Sunday) they were unbelievable - absolutely unbelievable.

“We didn’t win, but that is sport.”

On giving up two goals in the final five minutes of regulation, Aldridge said it would be a harsh lesson for his players.

“We’ve just to learn from it and learn how to kill off games again,” he added.

“Then with a shootout, it’s a coin flip – we scored some nice goals, they scored some nice goals – they scored one more nice one than we did.

“It is tough because we lose the hockey game and I’m telling the guys how good they are. We’ve been winning games lately and I’ve been telling them that they haven’t been good enough.

“But it’s sport and they’ve just got to realise how good they were (on Sunday) - they were unbelievable.”