The Billingham Buccaneers finished 4th in the NIHL2 league in their inaugural season which qualified us for the playoffs.

As we finished 4th we were drawn against the 5th place team which was the Sheffield Titans in the quarter-finals of the playoffs.

The 1st game against the Sheffield Titans was held at the Billingham Forum it turned out to be a tight affair with the Billingham Buccaneers coming out as 6-2 winners.

The 2nd leg was played the following day at Ice Sheffield where the Sheffield Titans gave their all and the game ended up as a 3-3 draw, unfortunately, this wasn’t enough for the Titans to progress to playoff weekend, but it was enough for the Buccaneers to make playoff weekend in their 1st season.

Playoff weekend was held at Ice Sheffield on the 6th and 7th of April.

The Buccaneers were seeded 4th going into playoffs and we were 1st up against the No. 1 seed and a very strong Telford Tigers team at 10:00 on the Saturday morning.

Telford Tigers were already League and Cup champions this season and were looking to be crowned playoff champions and complete the treble.

It was very good game against the Telford Tigers with the Buccaneers coming out 2-1 winners, which meant we progressed to the final.

The other semi-final was between Sutton Sting (No 2 seed) and the NIHL2 Coventry Blaze (No 3 seed) with Sutton coming out on top 6-4 in a very close game.

This meant that The Buccaneers would face Sutton Sting in the playoff final on the Sunday at 13:00.

Again, it was very close game and a great showpiece for the fans.

It finished 3-3 in regular time and then it went into sudden death 3 on 3 overtime for 5 minutes which also ended scoreless.

It then went into penalty shots which were 5 per team, this ended up 1-1 so it then went to sudden death penalty shots with the Buccaneer’s Tom Wakefield scoring the winning penalty shot which made the Buccaneers the National Ice Hockey League Laidler Playoff Champions 2024.

Nobody ever expected us to achieve this in our 1st season but with pure grit and determination we succeeded.

The Buccaneers ended up being 1 of only 2 teams in the league which have beaten all the other teams in the league during the 2023/2024 season and the playoffs.