Sheffield Steelers slip from top of Elite League but have quick chance to douse rivals Guildford Flames

But fixture schedules are not meant to be accommodating or make life easy for any team.

And so it was that the Steelers found themselves heading north to Scotland for a second visit of the season to Fife Flyers on Saturday morning.

And, after 20 minutes it looked as if the visitors were suffering some sort of hangover from the travelling involved around their 3-1 defeat to Cardiff Devils, trailing 2-1 against Fife – Daniel Ciampini’s 14th-minute leveller being sandwiched by strikes from Janne Kivilahti and Dillon Lawrence.

But the second period brought a welcome upturn, the Steelers levelling just after the halfway mark through D-man Kevin Schulze, Aaron Fox’s players completing the job shortly after at 32.49 when Ciampini doubled his tally for the night with a shorthanded strike.

It proved enough for two points, although not enough to keep hold of top spot, Guildford Flames snatching the lead back with a 5-4 win over Nottingham Panthers on Sunday while the Steelers were resting their weary bus legs.

The two face each other in Sheffield next Saturday, 24 hours after the Steelers have made yet another trip across the Pennines to take on Manchester Storm.

"We did enough to get the job done and that was the most important thing” said Steelers’ head coach Aaron Fox. “We were in Cardiff on Thursday and that was a long old road trip for us and I don’t think we were fully ready to start (in Fife)’

"I felt after the first 20 minutes we found our game in the second period and kind of took over

“But credit to Fife, they came back at us in the third and Matt Greenfield had to make a couple of big saves for us, although we didn’t capitalise on our power play chances where I thought we could have put this game away

“Having won 11 games in a row and then lost in Cardiff (on Thursday) it was important that we bounced back right away and, hopefully, this is the start of another winning streak.”