EIHL Preview: Flyers at Steelers – 26 October 2013

The Sheffield Steelers host the Fife Flyers at Ice Sheffield this Saturday, as the South Yorkshire side look to continue their impressive rise up the EIHL standings.

Sheffield, who beat Belfast at the Arena last weekend, have now won four of their five Elite League games after three weeks of Challenge Cup fixtures in September.

The game comes just a week after the Steelers beat ninth placed Fife 4-1 in Scotland, relying on a Rob Sirianni double to get the result. Sirianni, who joined the team just a fortnight ago went into last weekend having bagged a hat-trick on home debut against Cardiff. Sirianni represents a brand new scoring threat for the Steelers, who struggled earlier in the year having lost top scorer Max Lacroix for an extended period of time.

The Steelers completed the perfect weekend following the Fife win by also defeating league leaders Belfast at home on Sunday. The win came courtesy of a stand-out performance by Goalie Frank Doyle, who gained EIHL player of the week for his efforts, which included saving two second period penalty shots. The game winning goal scorer in that game, Jonathan Phillips, will also be in the spotlight this weekend, as he is set to be the fourth man (and the fourth Steeler) to play his 600th EIHL game on Sunday.

The Steelers this weekend sees assistant coach Mark LeFebvre lead out the side following the sad loss of Head Coach Doug Christiansen’s father in the week, and LeFebvre will no doubt be confident in a team that has climbed to third in the EIHL since fully starting its League campaign to repeat their performance at Fife last week, and pick up the two points.