Leeds Knights 'heart' hailed after keeping season alive with derby semi-final win over Sheffield Steeldogs
LEEDS KNIGHTS coach Ryan Aldridge hailed the “heart” of his players after they came from behind to see off Sheffield Steeldogs and reach the NIHL National play-off final in Coventry.
Captain Kieran Brown scored twice at the SkyDome Arena with Matt Bissonnette’s third period strike proving the difference between the two sides in a nail-biting derby encounter.
As they did last week when beating defending play-off champions Milton Keynes Lightning on the road to book their place in Coventry, the Knights did it the hard way, effectively icing just seven regular forwards and five defencemen because of injuries and GB Under-18 call-ups.
The Knights have a second derby battle on their hands in Sunday’s final after Hull Seahawks edged out 2025-26 regular season league champions Swindon Wildcats 2-1.
“Last weekend was all heart, tonight the same,” said head coach Aldridge. “I think we started slowly, because of the stress of the whole event and we could see that boys were tired.
“But we found a way to dig deep. Kieran obviously came up huge with two goals and we found a way to get the third - we managed to find a way.”
Aldridge confirmed he has additional bodies at his disposal for Sunday’s showdown with the GB Under-18s World Championship Division 1A campaign having ended on Saturday in Romania.
Steeldogs’ head coach Slava Koulikov praised the effort of the Knights, but was also quick to reveal his pride in his own players after what he said had to be viewed as a successful campaign, his team having already won the NIHL National Cup when edging out the Knights in the final over two legs last month.
"It was a good game,” said Koulikov. “We knew Leeds were going to have a plan, they’d been short on players with injuries and players away - it kind of reminded me of myself, for many years trapping the game out and hitting on the break.
"You’ve got to give huge credit to Leeds and to their players, they obviously bought in, they put their bodies on the line and you could see how much they wanted it.
"From the point of view of my players, we had some good spells, we got off to a good start in the first and second periods and it’s difficult to say in this situation that you’re proud of your players but I am.
“You’ve got to look at the bigger picture over the whole of the season as well.”
Koulikov expressed his disappointment with the officials, particularly in the second period where they incurred most of their penalties, including one for bair Gendunov who was sent to the box for goalie interference after colliding with Knights’ Sam Gospel when on a breakaway.
"I just can’t believe, that the Bair breakaway turned out to be our penalty,” he added. “I’m not saying we should have had a penalty or a penalty shot because it is a clear breakaway but it just makes no sense how we can be penalised.
“But it’s not just about that, we took three penalties in the second period as we were building momentum and that pushed us back.”