Leeds Knights see winning run ended as Sheffield Steeldogs snap 15-game derby losing streak

When the nine-game winning streak was finally curtailed, it was in comprehensive style, the Steeldogs ending their 985-day wait for a win over their Yorkshire rivals in a meaningful fixture with a deserved 6-2 win. Aldridge thought his team had got lucky when they were in Sheffield 10 days earlier, coming back home up the M1 with a 3-2 win he felt they didn’t really deserve. “Karma,” he said bluntly in his post-match interview. “We’ve been winning games on the road that we shouldn’t have been winning. The last game in Sheffield, we shouldn’t have won that game I don’t think. “Gossy (netminder Sam Gospel) has been keeping us in games and on Sunday we reaped the rewards of karma. “I thought Sheffield were good, I thought they really wanted it and I just don’t think we matched it. “Some of the older guys are going to have to get going a little bit, we need more than one line going every night and we’re not getting that right now.” In all three periods, the Steeldogs started strongly with a goal, going ahead through Walker Sommer after just 36 seconds and then turning the screw with two goals in 65 seconds from Bair Gendunov and Nathan Ripley with less than three minutes of the second period gone. Shortly after losing Oli Endicott for the night on a fighting major, it got worse for the hosts when Ripley grabbed his second of the night to make it 4-0, this time on the power play, shortly before the halfway mark. The Knights finally got themselves in the game through captain Kieran Brown at 34.51, but the four-goal lead was restored just over two minutes into the third when Sommer doubled his tally. Although the Knights hit back through a second for Brown at 47.49 on the power play, that was as close as they were able to get to a team they have dominated for so long. The icing on the cake for the visitors was Liam Steele’s break down the middle and clinical finish to beat Sam Gospel to make it 6-2 with 85 seconds remaining. It wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Knights, Aldridge was right to point out how deep his injury-hit roster had dug in recent weeks in order to rise to second in the table, a position they still hold despite this defeat. There are not too many teams in NIHL National who can put together such a consistent run of results but it is something the Knights have done for the past three and a bit seasons, a big reason behind the unrivalled success that has brought three league titles, a National Cup and a play-off crown. “What our boys have achieved over the last couple of weeks is phenomenal,” he added. “We could have been sitting in a completely different place “But this league is very competitive, we’ve been successful so far and we’ve got to find a way to regroup.” To help that ‘regroup’ Aldridge hopes to have a new face in later this week to fill the gap left by departing import D-man Matt Staudacher. “Hopefully we’ve got a new guy coming in,” he added. “He will help us and give us a bit of a spark and we’ll go from there.”