Sheffield Steelers sign off for 2023 with reasons to be cheerful and focus on the main prize

Firstly, their comprehensive 9-3 victory over Manchester Storm, then the fact the goals in that win came from nine different players as the team stretched their winning streak in all competitions to eight games.

For one of those scorers – captain Robert Dowd – his 17th-minute power play strike was his 329th for the club, equalling club legend Ron Shudra’s tally and moving him joint-second in the team’s all-time scoring list. Cue more celebrations.

Throw in that nearest rivals Cardiff Devils lost 4-3 to Guildford Flames thereby stretching the Steelers’ lead at the top to six points heading into 2024 and there really wasn’t much more that could have gone right for Aaron Fox’s team.

But we are not even halfway through the 2023-24 Elite League season yet and, given recent experiences where the Steelers have fallen away after the turn of the year, there is little danger of anybody getting ahead of themselves in South Yorkshire.

Given a schedule that has brought them five games in 10 days, there is no let-up for the Steelers, who spend the next five days on the road, starting with Manchester on Monday, followed by Cardiff on Wednesday and Glasgow Clan on Friday. Oh, and don't forget a swift renewal against the Clan on home ice on Saturday.

Only then can the Steelers afford to relax, knowing they have another week before they play again.

There will be time to recover, there has to be, but head coach Fox is fully aware there can be no let-up in the team’s pursuit of a first regular season championship since 2016.

“We’ve put ourselves in a really good spot here after 21 games going into 2024,” he said. “But we also know that there are 33 games still left and a lot of things need to go right for us to have the run we’ve had.

“There are no guarantees that things aren’t going to happen - an injury here, an injury there.

“So we’ll focus on just one game at a time here and that is what we’ve done a really good job of so far - we haven’t got too far ahead of ourselves, we’re not looking past anybody.”

Strikes from Marc-Olivier Vallerand and Dominic Cormier put the Steelers 2-0 up inside 15 minutes before Dowd’s significant power play strike at 16.32 from close in was enhanced by Daniel Ciampini’s tip-in from a Colton Saucerman blast on the man advantage just three seconds before the interval.

If it wasn’t already, the game was ended as a contest when Kevin Tansey fired past Logan Flodell just under three minutes into the second period.

Zack Phillips struck with a token reply for the visitors to make it 5-1 at 26.13 but Matt Ginn’s team found themselves trailing by six goals before the end of the period after Brett Neumann and Brien Diffley also got on the scoresheet.

Two goals from Loren Ulett brought the visitors back to 7-3 an offered a degree of respectability, but those strikes were cancelled out by Patrick Watling and Mark Simpson, who both found the net in the last five minutes to complete the rout and maintain the Steelers’ 100 per cent record over their Roses rivals with a seventh straight win over them.

"Nine goals is a good night for us,” added Fox. “Obviously, from puck drop I felt we we were very good.

"I actually thought our second period was probably better than the first and that kind of put the game out of hand.

"Then we went into cruise control in the third and maybe gave up a little too much but, as expected, we know that there is a lot of hockey right now and (in the third) we maybe weren’t as good as we should have been.

"But I would be lying if I said this wasn’t a good run we’re on right now, there is not a lot to be disappointed with in our group at all.”