Canadian duo and Italian goalie part of FIVE new signings for Sheffield Steelers

Having earlier announced the signings of flying Finns Joona Huttula and Joel Janatuinen, Fox has now completed his squad with the addition of Canadian forward Daniel Leavens, his compatriot defenceman Sacha Guimond and Italian netminder Marco De Filippo.

Leavens, 31, arrives after spells in Norway, Austria and Hungary where he never won any silverware.

“I want to win, I haven’t won professionally and I want that to change,” said the power forward who averages a point a game in those three leagues.

“I’ve been a part of some great teams, especially in the last couple of years and we have had really good regular seasons and then crashed out of the first round of the play-offs.

“I want to go better this coming season with the Steelers.”

Contrastingly his compatriot Guimond, a 33-year-old defenceman, brings a vast amount of title-winning experience to a locker room still buzzing from last year’s Elite League, Challenge Cup and Play-Off treble.

Guimond arrives in Sheffield on the back of consecutive championships in the French league with Rouen, prior to which he had spells with Bratislava, Innsbruck, Olimpija Ljubljana and Banska Bystrica.

“Winning back-to-back championships gives you a great feeling, and once you win you want to continue winning,” he said. “I guess that is a huge reason for wanting to come to Sheffield.

“I had the chance to move to a few teams in the league but I didn’t really know a lot about the Elite League, I did though know about Sheffield Steelers. That they always have a good team and a chance to win.”

Completing the roster is netminder De Filippo, who has 24 caps with Italy and will compete with Matt Greenfield between the pipes. “I like our goalie situation” said Fox, who is adding a netminder who spent seven seasons with Cortina.

“It’s an impressive group of imports and young two-way Brits playing for their positions.

"Marco is a goalie who has played extremely well in the Alps league and got the majority of starts in IceHL last year. His numbers in Alps are elite and extremely consistent year by year. I feel he will come in ready to compete for starts.”