Sheffield Steelers 3 Glasgow Clan 2: Pace-setting Steelers earn their downtime with 11th straight Elite League win

The Steelers closed out their relentless schedule of eight games in 15 days with a gritty 3-2 win at home to Glasgow Clan on Saturday, an 11th straight win in the league - and 12 in all competitions - which left them 12 points clear at the top of the regular season standings.

The only downside for Fox from the last two and a bit weeks is that he has seen the body count slowly stack up, with British pair Brandon Whistle and Sam Jones now joined by import forward Brett Neumann in the treatment room.

As a result, the second game against Glasgow in as many nights - this time in front of a sellout 9,300-plus crowd at the Utilita Arena - saw the Steelers playing shorter than usual and, save for a blistering opening 10 minutes, they were forced to earn the two points the hard way.

With no Sunday game, the players now won’t be back in until Wednesday when they will begin preparations for a weekend which brings a trip to Manchester Storm and a visit from Dundee Stars.

“I’m happy to have got through this period,” admitted Fox afterwards. “I think you could see it in the boys tonight, the energy levels weren’t quite there.

“It was a great start, I think we needed that start, actually, and then we gave up a cheap goal and took a five-minute penalty and that kind of kills the momentum of the game and then it just felt like it was pretty sloppy from both teams.

“There were a lot of penalties, not a lot of game flow. It’s not going to be pretty every night and when you don’t have your best - especially with this stretch we’ve been on - it was still pretty effective and I’m happy with the way this stretch has gone for us.

“We played three lines tonight, one of the first times all year we’ve done that on the back of a seven (games) in 12, a three in four, a five in seven, however you want to look at it.

“So, we were gassed but I’m just proud of the group, the no-quit mindset in there, a lot of team-first hockey.

“They’ve enjoyed a good stretch of playing here but now we’ll give them a few days, they’ll come back Wednesday, hopefully mentally recharged, physically get up a little bit for us to continue on this path.”

Before the action got underway, there was a special pre-game presentation for Steelers’ captain Robert Dowd, who after scoring the fifth goal in the previous night’s 6-3 win in Glasgow, moved second in the club’s all-time goal-scoring list.

It was his 330th strike for the Steelers, moving him one ahead of club legend Ron Shudra, who was on hand to present him with the puck he scored the historic goal with.

In the end, the Steelers were grateful to that “great start” which saw them race into a 3-0 lead inside seven minutes, Patrick Watling tipping in from Josh Nicholls with just 84 seconds on the clock before Colton Saucerman raced forward to take a pass from Marc-Olivier Vallerand and blast the puck over Jake Kielly’s right shoulder to make it 2-0 exactly five minutes later.

Only 19 more seconds had elapsed when Kielly was fishing the puck out of his net again, Josh Nicholls steering the puck home from close range on a 2-on-1 breakaway with Patrick Watling.

A Clan timeout quickly followed after which they began to come into the game more, their improvement rewarded by a sharp finish from Gary Haden who was left free to fire home past Anthony Morrone at 15.23.

Moments later, the Steelers found themselves another man light for the evening and forced into a reshuffle when defenceman Zach Vinnell was ejected from the game on a spearing call earlier in the play.

It meant Cole Shudra dropping back into defence as the Steelers found clear offensive openings harder to come by.

A goalless second period populated by regular penalties for both sides followed - the Steelers having to kill off 45 seconds of 5-on-3 at one point - but the home side battled hard to maintain their two-goal lead, with Morrone remaining resolute when called upon.

The third period was also somewhat disjointed from both teams, although there were some late nerves when Charlie Combs forced the puck home following a net-front scramble with 14 seconds remaining to make it 3-2.

After the restart, Morrone was called upon one last time to prevent the game going into overtime before the final buzzer sounded and the Steelers were able to look forward to some deserved downtime.