Edinburgh Capitals host Sheffield Steelers in the Elite Challenge Cup quarter-final first leg on Wednesday aiming to get off to a faster start than the last time the teams met.

Their league game in Edinburgh at the start of November saw the Steelers open up a four-goal lead, before the Capitals stormed back to force overtime.

They eventually lost out after a shoot-out, but Player/Coach Michal Dobran believes tonight will be a different type of game.

“Last time against Sheffield we didn’t play well at all and made some bad mistakes early on before playing great in the third period,” Dobron told the Edinburgh Evening Express.

“It’s a process for us and it’s something we’ll learn as the season progresses – I’m expecting a different type of match tonight.

“If we play our game for sixty minutes like we did against Coventry at the weekend, we can beat any team in the league.”

The Steelers head into the game on the back of Sunday’s impressive league victory against Belfast Giants, but Head Coach Paul Thompson admits the Capitals pose a real threat to his team’s hopes of progress in the cup.

“They’re good, make no bones about it – there isn’t a bad team in this league,” Thompson told Steelers TV.

“Whether you’re in tenth place or first place, you can see with the players, the points per game.

“There’s no-one getting five points a game anymore – there’s no-one who has 50 points in 10 games, so it’s a good league with good players and if you don’t turn up and you don’t have a good night, you just don’t win.

“This is the first time they’ve been in the Challenge Cup quarter-finals I think for seven or eight years so they’re going to be pretty excited about that.

“Just making it was a big thing for them and they’ll want to move forward, but it’s a trophy we want to move forward in too.”

(Image permission: Scott Wiggins)