Glasgow Clan 1 Sheffield Steelers 3: Winning momentum maintained by Steelers ahead of crunch clash at Belfast Giants

The Steelers enjoyed a 3-1 win at Glasgow Clan which saw them close the gap on Adam O’Keeffe’s second-placed team to one point ahead of a crunch clash between the two teams in Northern Ireland on Saturday.

The result may have extended third-placed Steelers’ winning run to eight games but Fox admitted his team were not firing on all cylinders in Glasgow, even though they went in at the first intermission 3-0 ahead.

Buoyed by the return to the line-up from injury of captain Robert Dowd and fellow forwards Marc-Olivier Vallerand and Brandon Whistle, the Steelers went ahead just after four minutes through Mark Simpson.

Maxim Golod doubled the advantage five minutes later before Whistle marked his return by making it 3-0 with just 14 seconds of the period remaining.

Glasgow - who won 2-1 in Sheffield last month - made life difficult for the visitors in the second period and got their rewards when Rylan Schwartz got one back at 35.58.

But that was as close as the hosts got, with Steelers’ netminder Matt Greenfield on top form, while his defence held firm in the third.

“I’m pretty happy that we were able to get the job done and come out of the game with two points,” said Fox afterwards. “I don’t think we were at our best tonight and you have to give credit to Glasgow because I felt they played really well.

“We were 3-0 up after the first period but I didn’t think that was a 3-0 period.

“And in the second our goaltender made some huge saves as they had a few odd-man rushes in transition but I liked our third, I thought that was our best period.

“We went into it 3-1 up but we didn’t give up anything off the rush and we defended hard and we defended well.

“So it was a pretty greasy, ugly road win and we’re happy to run away from this with the two points.

“And when I look back to the 2-1 loss we had to Glasgow at our place, I felt we deserved a little bit better then and I’d say they deserved better here.

"But we know going into Belfast, when they are rolling at home and playing some good hockey, we know we’ve got to be better than we were tonight.”