Sheffield Steelers coach Aaron Fox blasts players after home ice misery against Coventry Blaze

Just a handful of words - among many others - that Sheffield Steelers’ head coach Aaron Fox used to describe his players’ performance at the Utilita Arena on Saturday night.

Suitably buoyed by the previous night’s 4-3 regulation loss for Elite League leaders Belfast Giants across the Pennines at Manchester Storm, there was an understandable buzz ahead of the Steelers’ clash 24 hours later at home to Coventry Blaze.

A win would have taken second-placed Steelers to within three points of Belfast ahead of their respective encounters on Sunday night.

But the Steelers fell well short of the kind of performance Fox was hoping for, hammered 6-0 by a fast, combative Blaze team who rarely took their foot off the gas, much to the dismay of the vast majority of the 8,000-plus crowd.

Of course, everything could be as it was again come Sunday night should the Steelers win at Dundee Stars and Belfast fall at home to Glasgow Clan - both eminently possible. But it was, nonetheless, an opportunity missed, as a shell-shocked Fox admitted afterwards.

“We felt coming into this game, with Belfast losing that it would give us a bit of life,” said Fox after a first shutout loss on home ice since March 2023. “And for the first 8-10 minutes of this game I thought we played well.

“Then, after we gave up that first goal, we had no pulse in the last 50 (minutes) which is frustrating.

“We looked slow, tired, soft - all the buzzwords that if you’re not going to play the right way it is going to end up costing you.

“It’s pretty disappointing. That was a pretty embarrassing effort from our group. I don’t like to sit here making excuses or call guys out - that’s not my style - but it’s hard to defend that effort.”

Fox was keen to pay tribute to the visitors - who are having an impressive campaign under Kevin Moore - but he couldn’t disguise the deep frustration with his own roster.

“You have to give credit to Coventry - they played fast, they played hard, they played physical,” added Fox.

“They blocked a ton of shots and made it very difficult defensively. And they are a good transition hockey team and we were late on a lot of our tracking situations and coverages and they made us pay.

“There are a lot of little things that you need to do well in this business if you’re going to win games and if you don’t win the compete level and you’re not willing to win races and be first on pucks and keep pucks moving it can be a long night.”

There was no talk of the regular season title race being over but, with just 11 games remaining ahead of the trip to Tayside, time is running out for the defending champions.

“There were a handful of guys, who it was probably the worst game I’ve seen from them here - so we’ve got to look in the mirror here,” said Fox.

“We’ve got 5-6 weeks of hockey still to play and what I won’t accept is a group of guys that doesn’t fight and play hard until the finish.

“This is one of those where you really can’t sit here and defend as a coach and the reality is that it wasn’t good enough.”

As Fox observed, there was little to choose between the two teams in the opening exchanges, the only goal coming in the first period from Blaze’s British forward Jack Hopkins with just over 10 minutes gone.

It was the second period where the game unravelled for the hosts, though, Coventry doubling their lead through Michael Regush just 23 seconds in with Hopkins extending the advantage shortly before the halfway mark.

There was time for a fourth from Jackson Cressey on the power play at 35.00 and while the Steelers came out for the third and found ways to the net, they could not get the better of Blaze goalie Mat Robson, the only goals coming at the other end when Mike Kennedy - at 44.32 - and Nick Seitz - on the power play at 52.44 - completed an impressive night’s work for the visitors.