Cowdenbeath badly need safety points as they go into the final quarter of the season.
Livingston’s draw at Rangers has kept their hopes of creeping out of the bottom two alive and Cowden boss Jimmy Nicholl made clear to his side they will have to pick up at least seven points from their next five games to keep their eighth place.
It was a game in which the Hibees dominated the midfield jousts and grabbed two goals inside two minutes to stretch their long unbeaten run which sees them well placed to take second top spot in the end of season shake-up.
Cowden had done well enough for spells in the first-half without ever threatening Hibs keeper Mark Oxley.
In 32 minutes, a Fraser Fyvie 22-yard shot put the visitors in front, and then two minutes later Colin Marshall’s slack pass set-up Jason Cummings to double the lead.
The second half saw Hibs comfortably deal with Cowdenbeath’s attempts to mount a comeback, although the Edinburgh side rarely threatened themselves.
Nicholl felt his team had worked well to their pre-match plan in the opening half hour but “shot themselves in the foot” in the period before half-time.
He said: “Our pre-match plan was working pretty well as they had not created many good openings but the two goals conceded in two minutes were bad from our point of view.
“The first one saw us give the scorer the time to shape up his shot and the second was the result of a pass which went horribly wrong and that took the game away from us.
“To be honest, our passing was not really good enough in the first-half.
“We too often gave the ball away cheaply and several decent moves broke down without anything coming out of them.
“We made a change at the break to try and put more pressure on the Hibs midfield with Jon Robertson going on for Darren Brownlie and we certainly had more possession but did not create enough good chances.”
Nicholl added: “We need to win games to help our cause and this weekend we go to Queen of the South who are very much in the promotion play-off race so no easy points will be on offer and we need to produce our best form to take anything from that match”.
Hibs boss Alan Stubbs was very pleased with his team’s showing.
He said: “We knew the conditions would be difficult but we dominated possession in the first-half and got the goals we needed.
“This was the sort of result needed away from home to keep the pressure on the other sides going for the play-off places.”