Sheffield Steelers need to find the 'hunger' to keep Elite League play-off hopes alive

Aaron Fox’s team have already seen the league title and Challenge Cup go elsewhere this season following last year’s treble triumph - a stunning run of form late on just not enough to retain the regular season crown on the final day as Belfast Giants prevailed.

They can still make it to next weekend’s play-off finals weekend in Nottingham, although they will have to do it the hard way after Friday night’s 3-1 defeat at Glasgow Clan, who visit the Utilita Arena on Sunday afternoon (4pm) to conclude the quarter-final tie.

Fox felt his players were second-best at the Braehead Arena and is looking for a better performance from them in front of the their own fans.

“The hungrier team won that hockey game (on Friday),” said Fox. “I felt like when we battled back to 2-1 I would have been pretty happy to get out of that building with only a one-goal deficit then we give up another one late and that makes the job a little bit harder for us.

“You could tell the Clan were hungry and ready to play play-off hockey and I don’t think we matched it - we’ll have to do a lot better on Sunday to pull this thing back.”

The Steelers got off to a poor start when coughing up the puck on the Clan blue line, allowing Mitchell Heard to break free down centre ice and slot the puck five-hole on Matt Greenfield at 5.37.

There was little to choose between the two teams thereafter - Greenfield kept the busier of the two goalies - until the third period when the Clan doubled their lead just over two minutes in.

Heard was found all alone in the middle of the neutral zone by Rylan Schwartz and was allowed a free run at Greenfield before firing home to make it 2-0 at 42.02.

The goal prompted a no-holds barred fight from the subsequent face-off between the Steelers’ Kevin Tansey and Clans’s Felix Pare.

The Steelers gave themselves hope just over 10 minutes later when Daniel Ciampini robbed the puck off Pare in the right circle before spinning around and beating Clan goalie Landon Bow low to his left at 53.39.

It looked like that was how it would end in Glasgow but Heard had other ideas, breaking down the right before swivelling and setting up Matt Berry to force the puck home past Greenfield with just 58 seconds remaining.