History must not repeat itself for Sheffield Steelers

Sheffield skate on to Nottingham Panthers' ice pad on Saturday night, keen to end a losing streak that has crippled their title aspirations.

Sadly a similar curse affected the 2021-22 side which led the way clear for Belfast Giants to gallop seven points clear and win the EIHL league competition.

The Orange Army hopes history isn't repeating itself.

This season, Sheffield started to lose consistency from January 5 onwards.

Since then they have failed in 10 of 17 games.

In the previous campaign, the slide started later.

After a successful stretch of one loss in 15 games, they suddenly hit the skids.

From February 16, 2022, they lost 13 of 23 games, ending up runners-up to Belfast, who currently lead the 2022-23 table and won Challenge Cup in style on Wednesday.

Last season ended on an exceedingly low note with back-to-back defeats to Dundee Stars in the Play Offs.

Scott Allen was playing his hockey in the German second flight with EHC Freiburg at that time.

But his full attention now will be on putting Sheffield's recent form and disappointing results behind them.

"Our spirits have to stay high," he says.

"We are professional athletes, if we let a defeat rack our brains a bit then we shouldn't be in this business so we have to stay at the top form all the time mentally and physically and bring our compete every night.

"Things have not been going our way lately but that is not to say we are not going to come back in the next game with our best effort; that is all we can do."

Goals have been an issue of late, in the last 14 games they have averaged less than two and a half strikes.

Allen thinks a fit-again Daniel Ciampini will help if he rejoins Brett Neumann and himself on the first line.

"If he (coach Aaron Fox) keeps us together we will start building - I know Ciampini is still working to get back into top shape, the flu hit him pretty hard.

"Once we are rolling again we will be a line that obviously depended on to score goals every night.

"At the end of the day we are paid to score goals so we have got to find it within ourselves to put the puck in the net."

Asked to explain why goals had dried up he replied: "If I knew the answer to that question we wouldn't be dried up right now.

"We have just got to keep working at it, stay focused, and not get too down."

Allen is looking forward to the trip to Nottingham.

"They are a run-and-gun team, I feel the offence opens up against them.

"They are well coached over there, those are always fun games to play in with the big rivalry."

Sheffield host Manchester Storm on Sunday, and will hope for revenge after losing on the smaller Altrincham pad on February 22.

Allen says: "It is definitely a different game (on the bigger pad) we try to play our style with speed and width, getting pucks deep obviously. There is a lot more open ice at home."

Sheffield need four points and then win every other game going forward.

Is this possible?

Allen thinks it is.

"Yes we are absolutely capable of it," he said.

"We have established that throughout the season we can play at the top level in the league, and we can be the best team in the league, so it is just whether we execute this or not."

Most of Steelers' flu bug victims are on the mend, although it is lingering with Robert Dowd and Marco Vallerand.

Injured Brandon Whistle has skated this week and hopes to play.