Sheffield Steelers coach Aaron Fox on taking the mental strain amid the 'grind' of winning Elite League title

The Steelers are now targeting a treble for 2023-24, with the play-offs scheduled to start on the weekend of April 14-15 with the Final Four Playoff Weekend in Nottingham a week later.

It is a short road, but often a tricky one to navigate all the way to the Sunday final - the grand conclusion of all EIHL campaigns.

The Steelers are obviously more well-equipped to make it through to the showpiece occasion than any of their rivals.

But this time of year is not just about the physical toll taken on bodies, or ‘dinged up’ players as Steelers’ head coach Aaron Fox often describes those in his team’s locker room carrying a few bumps and bruises.

Getting over the ‘line’ that Fox has often talked about during a relentless campaign was no easy task and has as much to do with the mental strain of maintaining such a high-level of performance night after night after night.

That’s why, after clinching the title in front of a sold out Utilita Arena with a 7-3 win against Guildford Flames on March 24, Fox was more than willing to allow his players three full days off - save for a season ticket event with fans which became a continuation of their title celebrations.

Fox has no doubt he has the people in the locker room to ‘reset’ and go again in search of a play-off crown, something you would find hard not to believe, given they came out of the most recent weekend of action with four more points - courtesy of a dominant 4-0 win against second-placed Cardiff Devils to close out their home schedule, before twice coming from behind to take their trip to Manchester Storm into overtime where they won 5-4.

This is also a team, don’t forget, that has not suffered back-to-back defeats all year.

“I think there was a little bit of mental fatigue last week, for the first time after seven months there,” said Fox. “They could kind of rest, have some fun, not worry about the grind and the mental pressure to try and get this over the line and I think that was the best thing just for their heads.

“There is a lot of work that goes into a season, just the day-to-day management and we as coaches just try to keep the group as committed as we can.

“And that group has done a really, really, good job this year, we haven’t lost two in a row and that isn’t easy. There’s been no hockey lull where we have lost our form or have had anything to be concerned about in that respect.

“So it has been special. It’s been a couple of years now where I thought we had a really good chance (of winning the league title) and we couldn’t get it done, so this felt good.”

For anyone outside the UK, the regular season title being the premium target for Elite League teams is somewhat mystifying, given the vast majority of other hockey-playing nations place far greater emphasis on the play-offs.

Hailing from North America, Fox will have been among that group but says he got his head around the expectations in the UK top tier pretty quickly. After all, he had no choice but to.

“I just think you appreciate how hard it actually is to win this league title,” he added. “The longer you’ve been here in this league, all the different things that you kind of need to go right to put you into a position to get it done, it’s a long haul and I definitely think I appreciated it more winning now probably, than I would have done if we had won it two years ago, say.

“I think I grasped it pretty quickly (that the league was the priority), but I still think you take it for granted from the outside looking in.

“There’s no question that we sat there at the end of it all, mentally exhausted.

“We won it this year but I can tell you that the mental stress and exhaustion and grind that goes into it is real.

“If you’re in it for the whole year, that’s what it is like. If you’re not, then obviously that changes the dynamic a little bit, but we were in it until the last week of the year, several times since we’ve been here and it does absolutely take its toll on you.”

Steelers spend the rest of the regular season on the road, with three more games this week.

Wednesday night sees them visit Fife Flyers, one of five teams still in a battle to make the three remaining post-season spots, a group that also includes Dundee Stars, Coventry Blaze, Glasgow Clan and Nottingham Panthers.

This weekend then sees the Steelers close out their campaign with a double-header weekend in Belfast.

League chiefs will probably have planned the schedule that way in the hope that the two would still be fighting it out for top spot come the final weekend.

But 2023-23 treble winners Belfast’s race was run some time ago, having endured a tough campaign that currently has them 19 points adrift of runaway champions Steelers and with only the play-offs on their radar now.

The Steelers are currently 14 points clear of second-placed Cardiff. They could yet eclipse their biggest margin of success in an EIHL title-winning season of 16 points, which separated them and Nottingham in the first-ever campaign under the Elite League banner back in 2003-04.

Belfast hold the record for the most comprehensive league title success in the EIHL era, finishing a whopping 23 points clear of the Steelers when lifting the crown in 2013-14.