Sheffield Steelers v Guildford Flames - Aaron Fox confident in Steelers' ability to deliver when it really matters

The Steelers have had the better of the Flames this season, even ending their hoodoo at home to Paul Dixon’s team and, as a result, are leading the head-to-head regular season series 4-1.

But that will count for nothing, says Fox.

The Flames come into the showpiece game having lost eight out of their last 10 league games.

That doesn’t matter one bit, insists Fox.

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The Steelers have been the form team virtually all season during 2023-24 and look set to lift their first Elite League regular season crown since 2016.

Doesn’t even come into it, according to their boss.

“Everything gets thrown out of the window in these kinds of situations,” said Fox. “We’ve obviously watched their last couple of games, we’ve obviously taken some stuff from our last game down in Guildford and we’ve taken some stuff from the last home game we played against them as well.

“We feel like we’ll put together the kind of gameplan we’ll need to run from a systems point of view and then it will just come down to the basics such as battling, making plays, playing in concept and making sure we win the little things.

“I just feel like anything that has happened earlier this year, or last year, counts for nothing when you’re in a one-off game of this importance.

“If you look at our form, you look at our last 15 games, it’s not as good as the 15 games before that.

“I don’t think either team is going to need any motivation to get up for a one-off game where the stakes are so high. What’s happened before just doesn’t come into it.”

For the Steelers, tonight represents their first opportunity to get their hands on silverware since 2020, when they won this very competition by beating Cardiff Devils 4-3 in South Wales, just a week before the season was ended due to the Covid pandemic.

Since then, the Steelers have come up short, meaning there was more pressure on Fox’s shoulder coming into his fourth full season behind the bench.

Owner Tony Smith made it clear winning silverware was expected. As it stands, the Steelers are still in the race to taste success on all three fronts.

It is clearly an ambition of the club’s to try and match the treble-winning exploits of the Belfast Giants from last season but, Fox insists, tonight’s showdown in front of a sellout Utilita Arena crowd is just one small step on the road towards achieving that.

“Obviously, you’re always optimistic when a season starts,” adds Fox. “I feel like we put ourselves in a great position over the last two years to compete for trophies.

“But we fell short and that is just a part of this business that you have to live with.

“In saying that, I believe this is a completely different team to what we have had in each of the last two years.

“I’m very confident in our group and I feel like if we’re at our best and we come ready to play a 60-minute hockey game, then I think hopefully the best team will win.

“I love this group. I think our compete level and just how business-like we’ve been game-in, game-out this year has been outstanding.

“I feel that, for the most part, we have shown up for all the big games and been ready to play.

“Maybe there has been a result here and there that we didn’t get in those games, but it wasn’t because of a no-show from us.”

In terms of a potential treble-winning campaign, Fox refuses to entertain any such notion until his team registered the first marker on that path.

Each time the Steelers have come up short this season, they have responded in positive fashion, the weekend just gone proving to be the perfect example of that.

A 5-2 defeat at home to Belfast will have caused anxiousness among some of the team’s fanbase - particularly with three of the Steelers’ seven league losses this season having come in the last six games.

But the riposte was swift and brutal less than 24 hours later, when they came out and raced into a 4-1 lead by the end of the first period, eventually securing a 6-1 victory over the Giants which left them 11 points clear of second-placed Cardiff with just 10 games to play.

“It starts with one (trophy),” insisted Fox. “You’ve got to win that first one for that team to be part of that kind of conversation.

“So we’re not going to look past that. Of course, it would be amazing to be able to compete for more than one trophy, but you can’t compete for more than one trophy until you win that first one.

“That would be a huge first step for us tomorrow if we can do that.”