Belfast Giants 2 Sheffield Steelers 4: Aaron Fox takes the positives as Steelers lose ground on rivals

The Steelers saw their eight-game winning streak ended in Northern Ireland, the 4-2 loss enabling the second-placed hosts to move three points clear in the regular season standings.

They also have one game in hand on the Steelers which they play on Sunday night at home to Manchester Storm.

But with 24 games still remaining, there is plenty of time for the Steelers to bounce back in what looks likely to be a three-way battle witb the Giants and leaders Cardiff Devils, who are in Continental Cup action this weekend.

“That was a pretty good hockey game, big boy hockey out there tonight,” said Fox. “I liked our compete, I liked our pushbacks, especially after we went down 3-1 when I thought we started to play the way we needed to play.

“We then started playing, turned the intensity up and got a little nasty ourselves and it turned into a really, really good hockey game.

“So I don’t fault our compete or our effort. Belfast were good, they are playing good hockey right now, there’s no question about it and you have to be ready to man up and play a physical game if you want to compete with them right now.

“II thought we did that - especially the second half of the game - we just didn’t get the result we wanted.”

The Steelers went ahead with a sweet end-to-move which started in their own zone by Colton Saucerman and, after some neat passing by Marco-Olivier Vallerand and Brien Diffley was coolly finished by captain Robert Dowd with just over 10 minutes gone.

The Giants pulled level with just 52 seconds of the period remaining though when Grant Mismash fired past Matt Greenfield on the power play from the right circle towards the end of an interference call on the Steelers’ Patrick Watling.

The Steelers found themselves 3-1 down by the halfway point, however, Bobo Carpenter putting the Giants ahead at 27.37 from close-range before Ciaran Long finished off a swift transition to double the lead just under two minutes later.

But the Steelers rallied impressively and were soon back in the game when Patrick Watling produced a sublime finish into Jackson Whistle’s top right-hand corner from the top of the left circle off a feed from Maxim Golod to make it 3-2 at 33.13.

Thereafter the game could have gone either way, but the Steelers were hit by a fourth goal from the Giants when Mark Cooper fired home from eight yards out following good work behind the net by Ben Lane and Mismash to make it 4-2 at 48.34.