Sheffield Steeldogs v Bees IHC - Coach Jason Hewitt looking to bring both ends together to produce overdue winning streak

Back-to-back wins are not a problem for Hewitt’s team – having achieved it four times already this season – it is building on that which has so far proved beyond them.

Goals certainly help but, as they go into today’s home clash with Bees IHC – another of NIHL National’s inconsistent teams – they are currently the league’s lowest scorers with 70 in 23 games.

But it is at both ends of the ice where Hewitt has been left frustrated.

“The goalscoring is something that is frustrating, big time,” said Hewitt. “But we’ve always been a fairly low-scoring team, although we usually have a couple of guys up there.

“The thing is we’re usually quite tight defensively. You can win a game 2-1, 3-2 but we’ve not managed to put both parts of the game together enough times.

"I feel like we’re only ever a couple of steps away from winning games on a regular basis. At the minute, the mistakes are just in areas where we can’t afford to let up.

“So we’ve keyed in during practice this week on those areas and, hopefully, we can start to put a decent run together.

"We’re not making excuses, we’ve just got to be better. We are good enough, it’s just a commitment and a case of keeping the lights on, really – just not having those moments.”

The festive schedule has been relatively kind to the Steeldogs who, after Saturday’s visit from the Bees, four games in nine days, similar to most of the season.

Telford Tigers visit Ice Sheffield on Wednesday before a weekend double-header against Leeds – the second part of which is on home ice on New Year’s Eve – closes out the year.

Hewitt will be keen to take some good form into a third derby meeting of the season with Hull Seahawks, which sees the Steeldogs visit East Yorkshire for a second time this season.

Steeldogs will be without Jack Brammer and Vladislavs Vulkanovs, who are both suspended as a result of incidents in the win at Raiders.

"They were just from nothing things really, in my opinion, but I hope that come the turn of the year, we get a bit more luck in that respect,” added Hewitt. “At the same time you have to earn it. We’ve got to be smarter at times, but it does seem easy to get suspended in this league these days.”