Sheffield Steelers get ready for 'video nasty' after midweek misery at Cardiff Devils

It was a true baptism of fire for new goalie Jere Huhtamaa from Finland, the game effectively over as a contest before the halfway mark as a stunned Steelers found themselves 5-0 down.

Pete Russell’s were able to extend their lead further in the 47th minute before the visitors troubled the scoreboard at the Vindico Arena, the cause already lost as they slipped six points behind Cardiff in the standings.

The Steelers have three games in hand on their South Wales rivals and we are barely a quarter of the way through the regular season campaign.

But Fox’s team are going to have to quickly improve as they prepare for a testing visit from Nottingham Panthers on Saturday ahead of an always-tricky trip to Fife Flyers 24 hours later.

In mitigation, the Steelers are missing several key players through injury, including netminders Matt Greenfield and Marco De Filippo - which forced them into adding Huhtamaa to the roster on Tuesday - as well as defencemen, Colton Saucerman, Veeti Vainio and forward Joel Janatuinen.

Captain Robert Dowd returned to the line-up in Wales, while Ivan Bjorkly Nordstrom was called up from Sheffield Steeldogs.

But, regardless of who was in or out of his starting line-up, Fox said the performance simply was “not good enough.”

“It was all over after about the first 20-25 minutes of that hockey game,” said the Steelers’ head coach. “I thought Cardiff came ready to play, a first-place game - you could tell their group had the intensity it was looking for and we just didn’t match that early on.

“They won every race, they won every battle and we played tight and played panic hockey.

“It was a little disappointing, for sure, and we didn’t put Jere in a great position. He got off the plane on Tuesday, he had a quick skate and then we bring him down here, it’s not an easy environment.

“There’s a few that I’m sure he’d like back but we wanted to keep him in there to get that valuable game experience which we thought was important for him.

“This will be a pretty ugly video session for us on Friday and we’ve got to throw this one down the toilet and move past it and get ready for two big games this weekend.”

Huhtamaa must have wondered what he let himself in for on his debut after the Devils raced into a 3-0 first period lead, Josh McDonald beating him five-hole at 4.01 before Ben Davies pounced quickly on a rebound to make it 2-0 12 minutes later.

Gleason Fournier increased the home team’s advantage less than two minutes later and it got worse just over two minutes into the second period, Brett Perlini converting at the back post on a 2-on-1 rush before Andrew MacWilliam made it 5-0 in the 25th minute.

Cole Sanford heaped further pain on the Steelers at 46.40 before - two minutes later - an improving Steelers got some reward for their efforts when Daniel Ciampini fired a reply.

As the game entered the final two minutes, Mitchell Balmas reduced the arrears further before Mark Simpson improved the look of the scoreline at least with 13 seconds remaining.