Sheffield Steelers cover all bases by adding American winger Patrick Harper for remainder of Elite League season

Winger Brett Neumann has been placed on injured reserve for at least a month, leaving the door open for an additional face.

Head coach Aaron Fox has moved quickly to plug the hole and give himself more options, with 25-year-old New York-born Harper expected to go straight into the line-up for Wednesday night’s Challenge Cup semi-final second leg clash against Coventry Blaze at the Utilita Arena.

Harper arrives in South Yorkshire with a decent pedigree having won gold at the World Junior Championships in Canada back in 2016, when he played alongside a number of players now firmly established in the NHL, including New York Rangers’ Adam Fox and Boston Bruins’ Charlie McAvoy. He also won bronze with the US team the following year when he posted two goals and two assists in seven games.

The 5ft 9in s left-hander has spent the 2023-24 season in the ECHL at South Carolina Stingrays where he has posted 10 goals and six assists in 31 appearances.

He has also previously spent time in Europe playing in Finland’s top-flight Liiga and, last year, in Sweden’s second tier HockeyAllsvenskan with Mora and Kristianstads IK, where he recorded 21 points in a combined 48 appearances, six of them goals.

“He’s a good player, skilled, a little bit under-sized but he sees the ice real well,” said head coach Fox. “It’s nice for him to have some European experience already.

“I did some work on him and I just feel like he’s got tons of upside, I also spoke to some guys to get some good character references too.

“He’s a good fit with Neums going on the IR for a minimum of four weeks and with the deadline being February 15 we didn’t want to risk losing a guy or two and being in a really tough spot, so we wanted to be forward thinking and make sure we were covered.”