UTILITA ARENA, SHEFFIELD | Sheffield head coach Aaron Fox wanted to see his team play their usual brand of direct and aggressive hockey on Wednesday [13 March]. Defeating the Guildford Flames 3-1 in the Challenge Cup final was a bonus for his treble-targeting Steelers.
“It’s good, what a night, the boys played their asses off tonight and competed really hard,” Fox told BBC Radio Sheffield.
“This feeling is why we play the games. Hopefully, that’s not the only one we get this year. We’ve got work to do, we can’t take nights off, and we’ll get back to it on Friday.”
Sheffield broke the deadlock after just two minutes, with Brien Diffley finding space at the back door and punching Robert Dowd’s cross-seam pass into the net.
“We entered the zone with good speed [and then] I had to do a couple of cutbacks to lose my man and get away from the corner,” Dowd told BBC Radio Sheffield. “I saw that ‘Diff’ had gotten behind his guy and all I had to do was feather it to the backdoor.”
Bradley Lalonde put the Flames on the board in the 13th minute, waltzing across the blueline and firing an unscreened shot over Matthew Greenfield’s glove against the run of play.
Sheffield wobbled briefly but sent the home crowd into raptures in the final seconds of the first period when Patrick Watling rifled the puck home from the left circle on the powerplay.
Challenge Cup: Aaron Fox, Sheffield Steelers (Image: Dean Woolley)
Mitchell Balmas netted the Steelers’ third of the net four minutes into the middle frame, redirecting Diffley’s shot beyond the reach of Taz Burman.
Paul Dixon’s Flames generated the majority of third period scoring chances but were unable to beat Greenfield for a second time as the Steelers ended their four-year trophy drought.
“He always stands on his head,” Fox said of Greenfield. “Knowing that he’s going to give us everything every single night is a huge boost.
“It was an awesome effort from him tonight [and] the defenceman played extremely well in front of him, they were eating pucks all night. It was a great sixty-minute effort from a great hockey team.”
Sheffield Steelers set sights on Elite League Grand Slam:
With Sheffield nine points clear of the Cardiff Devils at the top of the Elite League standings and the regular-season title within touching distance, the Steelers’ attention turns to securing a historic league, cup, and playoff treble.
Challenge Cup: Sheffield Steelers, Elite League (Image: Dean Woolley)
“We came here at the start of the year to win trophies, not individual awards, and this is the first step,” said goal-scorer Balmas. “We’ve got two more [to win] but we’re going to celebrate this tonight.”
Added defenceman Brett Neumann: “Last year left me hungry for a championship, I had that empty feeling at the end of the year and that’s one [trophy] down. We’ve got our eyes set on all three, hopefully luck falls our way and we can get it done.”
The Steelers return to action on Saturday [16 March], hosting the Nottingham Panthers in league action.
