Sheffield Steelers v Nottingham Panthers: Ambitious Steelers look to stay in the frame on all fronts

Trailing 3-0 from last week’s first leg at the National Ice Centre, Steelers’ head coach Aaron Fox admitted his players face an uphill battle to overturn the deficit at the Utilita Arena.

Regardless of what happens tonight in front of a sellout crowd, however, the path to a bigger prize looms large 48 hours later.

That is when the Steelers – second in the Elite League regular season standings – pay a third and final visit of the 2025-26 season to leaders Belfast Giants.

Two nights later, third-placed Cardiff Devils – who swapped places with the Steelers at the weekend after taking just a point from meetings with Belfast and Nottingham – head to South Yorkshire.

Belfast currently sit six points clear of the Steelers with a game in hand. In all, there are three more meetings between the two this season, with Belfast scheduled for a double-header in Sheffield on the weekend of March 14-15.

The mission, simply, is to ensure that come Sunday evening, the Steelers are still in the hunt for all three pieces of silverware.

Not surprisingly, Fox is only concerned with getting past Nottingham and into a final showdown against either Belfast or Coventry Blaze next month. All league issues can wait until 10pm onwards tonight.

“Obviously, if we don’t (beat Nottingham) then we’re out of the Cup, so that’s one trophy that’s on the line for us to stick around in,” said Fox.

“And then obviously with the Belfast-Cardiff weekend, we know where things stand at the moment with the point differences.

“It would help our case a lot to go in there (Belfast) and find a way to get two points – and if we don’t, it makes that particular hill a lot harder to climb.

“We’d still have those two games at home against Belfast, but, again, we just have to focus on one goal at a time. Right now, we’re focussed on the Nottingham game and then after that we’ll focus on Belfast.”

Having come through a wobble that saw them lose seven games in nine – culminating with a chastening 7-1 loss in Belfast on January 24 – the Steelers have managed to turn their campaign around, their only loss in 60 minutes since then being in the first leg in Nottingham.

Other than that shutout in the East Midlands, scoring goals has not been a problem, a trend Fox is aware his team must continue if they are to stand any hope of progressing.

“We obviously need to get off to a good start and put them on their heels,” added Fox. “We need to get our crowd into it and an early goal would obviously help a ton in getting the momentum back on our side a little bit.

“We know it is an uphill task but we also know that we can score goals and all we need to do is get that first one and find a little belief in our game and make them feel it a little bit with our crowd and hopefully win each period 1-0.

“And that is the end goal for us, at least getting this game to an opportunity in overtime or penalty shots.

“We’re down three and we know it’s not going to be easy against a very good team – but we believe we’ve got the guys in the room that can win a game by three goals at least.

“It’s one of those where the little things are going to matter, the details are going to matter – muddying the game up a little bit, getting to the paint and making sure that we’re a heavy, physical and hard team to play against and then take our chances when we get them.”

Fox said he would be making gameday decisions on the fitness of forwards Brett Ritchie and Sam Tremblay and defenceman Brien Diffley.

Ritchie was a late scratch ahead of Sunday’s 6-3 win at home to Guildford Flames, while Diffley and Tremblay missed both games on the weekend.