Sheffield Steelers 5 Nottingham Panthers 1 - Captain Robert Dowd sets early tone to maintain Steelers' position of authority in Elite League

The win leaves the Elite League leaders four points clear of closest rivals Cardiff Devils, who enjoyed a handsome 8-0 win over Coventry Blaze.

The deadlock was broken at the Utilita Arena when Brien Diffley found Dowd at the back post for an easy tap-in at 3.34

A little over eight minutes later, in an almost carbon copy move, Marc-Olivier Vallerand set up Dowd for his second of the night.

The Panthers halved the deficit through a short-handed strike by Hugo Roy at 15.37, although the Steelers’ quickly restored their two-goal lead through Vallerand on the power play just 85 seconds later.

That was how it stayed, Panthers having a number of chances in the second, only to fall further behind with just 54 seconds remaining when Brett Neumann made it 4-1 on the power play.

In the third period, Cole Shudra continued his rich vein of scoring form to make it 5-1 at 49.50.

The two teams meet again on Wednesday at the Motorpoint Arena (face-off 7pm).

Afterwards, Steelers’ head coach Aaron Fox said he was pleased to come away with the win, despite it not being his team’s most fluent of performances.

"We had two days off after our game against Cardiff,” said Fox. “And I felt like you could tell we were maybe a little bit tired and we weren’t 100 per cent tonight.

"But we got through that game well, I felt we managed it well and we’ll take the big ‘W’ and move on to tomorrow night in Nottingham.”