Leeds Knights coach Ryan Aldridge gives his verdict on opening weekend of 2022-23 NIHL National season

Two games, two wins, one of which came against the defending league champions, the other on the road against a team who proved a regular thorn in the side of the Knights last season.

Given they plundered 13 goals across two nights, there were a number of standout performers, import forward Grant Cooper continuing to make himself a big favourite among the Knights’ faithful with four goals, having registered a hat-trick on opening night on home ice against reigning regular season champions, Telford Tigers.

Elsewhere, Kieran Brown and Cole Shudra chipped in with three goals apiece, while experienced centre Matt Haywood found the net twice.

His team’s ability to spread the scoring across at least two lines brought Aldridge plenty of satisfaction - providing the secondary scoring he feels they lacked for much of last season, when they relied perhaps too heavily on the likes of Brown and Adam Barnes.

And while the aforementioned goalscorers were the ones to take the plaudits at the weekend, Aldridge believes he has a team possessing the potential for offensive threat across all three lines.

“It was good to see the points-scoring spread out across our top two lines, but our third line has got some good, skilled hockey players, too,” said Alridge.

“Those top two lines are going to be hard to stop and if teams can shut one line down, I feel like the other line is going to punish you.

“And that is good. We needed that secondary scoring, we relied way too heavily on two or three guys last year, but this year we’ve got six or seven to rely on.”

Another pleasing aspect for Aldridge was his team’s response to pressure situations, something he feels has been helped by the addition of key individuals in the summer such as Haywood and Cooper, helping provide some leadership out on the ice when it matters.

With 21-year-old Brown named as captain, Aldridge has already revealed he is also putting together a wider leadership group during the early weeks of the season, in which Brown will naturally be the leading voice. The assistant captains are expected to be named in the next couple of weeks.

“I felt we played great for the majority of the game against Telford and then, at Raiders, for 40 minutes I thought we were phenomenal,” added Aldridge.

“We didn’t really know what we were going to get when we got down there, it was a long road trip and we started slow and didn’t really get going until the third period, so to come away from there with two points was big for us.

“We have a different mindset to last year. For example, when Telford brought it back to one goal (on Saturday), last year we might have panicked.

“But Matty (Haywood) and the other older boys just calmed the ship down on the bench and told the others that we didn’t need to panic and that is a really good thing for us to have as a team.”