Saturday Night Review: Sheffield Steelers' shoot-out drama and how Hull Seahawks responded to points deduction

With less than 15 minutes remaining, the Steelers were trailing 2-0 in front of a 9,000-plus crowd at the Utilita Arena.

But less than 10 minutes later they were level, first Brandon Whistle halving the deficit from close range at 46.54 before Dominic Cormier beat the impressive Jason Grande at his near post at 53.56.

After a goalless overtime, the shoot-out went into sudden death where a Matt Greenfield save from Kristoff Kontos allowed Mitchell Balmas to fire the winner past Grande for the vital extra point.

For Steelers’ head coach Aaron Fox, it was just rewards for his players’ efforts.

"We were excellent from puck drop,” said Fox. “They got some great goaltending all night long but we were pretty dominant for a full 60.

"I told the guys after the game that I felt that was one of the best 60 minutes we’d played in a really, really long time.

“We just controlled the tempo throughout, we had 60-plus shots and were extremely unlucky or unfortunate to be down 2-0 late in that hockey game but I felt like if we could just get one, then the energy in this building would carry us through.”

In the meantime, Belfast maintained a six point lead over the Steelers with a second convincing win over Cardiff Devils in as many nights at the SSE Arena, running out 6-0 winners.

The Steelers will look to restore the gap to four points when they head to Guildford on Sunday night (face-off 6pm – stream tickets HERE)

In NIHL National, a short-benched Hull Seahawks went some way to soothing the frustration felt over being docked two points for an ‘administrative error’ by winning 4-1 at Berkshire Bees.

Hull saw the points won in a 6-5 overtime win at Peterborough Phantoms on February 9 taken off them as head coach Matty Davies was ineligible to be on the bench due to the team having exceeding 50 team penalty points – a threshold which means an automatic two-game ban for the coach.

As a result, Peterborough were awarded a mandatory 5-0 win, Davies hit with an additional two-game ban and the team slapped with a further 10 penalty points.

In a statement on the club’s Twitter account on Saturday, Hull said Davies would address the issue following Sunday night’s return game against the Bees in Hull (face-off 5.30pm).

With only 13 skaters due to injury and suspension, the Seahawks responded to their punishment in typically-determined fashion.

Falling behind to a seventh-minute William Stead strike, Hull hit back in a dominant second period through Owen Bruton, Emil Svec and Owen Sobchak before Jason Hewitt made it 4-1 in the 47th minute against the league’s bottom team.

For tickets or to buy the stream for Sunday’s game between Hull Seahawks and Berkshire Bees go HERE

Elsewhere, Leeds Knights followed up Friday’s 4-2 home win over Sheffield Steeldogs with a 4-1 win at Peterborough Phantoms.

Matt Barron put the Knights in control with a hat-trick before Matt Haywood completed the scoring with an empty-net strike with just under two minutes remaining.

Leeds are without a game on Sunday, while the Steeldogs are back in action on home ice against Solway Sharks.

For tickets or to buy the live stream to the game between Sheffield Steeldogs and Solway go HERE