Sheffield Steelers stay cool, calm and collected at top of Elite League after doing festive double over Nottingham Panthers

Aaron Fox and his players will wake up this morning safe in the knowledge they head into the new year as clear leaders.

A pair of cool, calm and collected performances against Nottingham Panthers over two days yielded four points, meaning the Steelers have lose just once in their last eight regular season games, that being an overtime defeat at the home of nearest rivals Cardiff Devils.

Yesterday’s win came despite three imports missing in the shape of goaltender Barry Brust, Andreas Valdix and Matias Sointu, who have all been placed in the EIHL’s Covid protocols.

The second meeting between the two sides in as many days was a closer affair than the Boxing Day encounter, at least until the Steelers struck twice in 29 second period seconds to knock the hosts out of their stride.

And while Nottingham again showed plenty of character in coming back, much like they did the previous day in South Yorkshire before going down 5-3, the Steelers showed impressive resolve to close the game out on both occasions.

For Steelers’ captain Phillips, his team’s ability to ‘get the job done’ is a big difference between now and two seasons ago which saw them hand advantage to Cardiff in the race for the title before Covid intervened and brought an early end to the 2019-20 campaign – only after Fox had helped end their 17-year wait for the Challenge Cup title.

“The big thing for us is the experience in that room of ours,” Phillips told Premier Sports TV.

“There are a lot of people who have won trophies before and know what it takes to win trophies. We can shut down games this year whereas we may have struggled to do that if we had held a lead going into the third period in that last full season we had.

“But now we can pull out those kind of tight games and know what to do in those dying minutes.”

After a goalless first period edged by the Panthers but which was mostly memorable for Rob Dowd and John Armstrong both dropping the gloves, the form of both goaltenders continued to dominate in the middle section.

But, against the run of play, the Steelers were to strike first, Alex Graham forcing a fine save from Kevin Carr before being quickest to react to fire home the rebound from a tight angle off Mark Matheson at 34.39.

Just 21 more seconds had passed before the Steelers doubled their lead, Marc-Olivier Vallerand combining well with Martin Latal down the right, from where the Czech Republic-born winger produced a slide-rule pass to find his team-mate, who was allowed too much space to slot home from close range.

The Panthers continued to enjoy the greater zone time, but they were chasing the game and paid the price when good approach work by Dowd saw his deflected effort rebound off an unsighted Carr right into the path of Tanner Eberle who gratefuly lifted the puck into the roof of the net at 54.40.

Sean Richards handed the Panthers slim hope with a shorthanded strike at 56.28 but, with Carr pulled, Vallerand grabbed his second of the evening with an empty-net strike with just 33 seconds remaining.