Sheffield Steelers Sam Jones frustrated but staying positive after injury blow

The 26-year-old Sheffield Steelers’ defenceman suffered a lower-body injury in last Sunday’s excellent 4-0 road win at defending Elite League champions Belfast Giants.

“It was definitely not easy to hear,” said Great Britain international Jones, now in his third full season with the team.

“I had a similar injury when I was in Fife, but it was more severe and I was out for about three-and-a-half months.

“From a personal level, I felt I had started playing better over the last three weeks, so it is frustrating.

"With everything that has happened this year, though, it puts a lot of things into perspective.

“I’m lucky to have good people at the club, who are helping me out a lot and I’m just fortunate that it wasn’t anything worse.

“Being back in the middle of January, I’m happy that I will be back in time to help the team through the last four months of the year which is really the crunch time.”

Head coach Aaron Fox said the club would evaluate the situation on a day-to-day basis with regard to whether they bring anybody else in as cover but, for now and as was the case in Thursday’s 5-1 Challenge Cup quarter-final victory at Manchester Storm, Cole Shudra will deputise for Jones on the back line.

“He was playing some really, really good hockey,” said Fox. “Him and Nevvy (fellow D-man, Niklas Nevalainen) were paired together for the last 10-12 games and then when Nevvy was out, him and Cole were very, very good as well.

"Any time that you lose a top Brit like that, it’s something you just can’t immediately replace, so we’ll have to figure out the best way forward here.

"Whether that is Shuds going back and playing some more minutes on ‘D’, or we maybe look to bring in another ‘D’ and have that competitive culture in our group with a healthy scratch potentially, so that Shuds can stay up as a forward.

“We’ll just have to evaluate that as it comes.”

On Thursday night’s 5-1 win at Manchester Storm in the first leg of their Challenge Cup quarter-final, Fox added: “Any time you go into a difficult building in a 120-minute hockey game and you get that four goal lead to take home, you are obviously going to be pretty happy.”

After falling behind to a Michael Korol goal in the seventh-minute, the Steelers levelled with one second of the first remaining with a power play strike from Robert Dowd.

Two early goals in the second – the first from Scott Allen at 22.27, the second on the power play from Marc-Olivier Vallerand two minutes later – put the visitors in control, before they were able to add further comfort ahead of the second leg in Sheffield on December 20 with third period strikes from Patrick Watling and Brandon Whistle.