Despite losing to Hull last night, there was around 100 Blaze fans in a pretty empty Sheffield Arena. They saw Ron Shudra inducted into the British Ice Hockey Hall of Fame before the Blaze who were without Cruikshank, Weaver, Soderstrom, Farmer, Murdy , Selmser, Ledgard and Selwood, got the game got underway.
The Blaze fans were in good voice as Dowd hit the post early on and then Tait went close for the Steelers. But they fell silent when the Steelers opened the scoring on 9.59 when Clark got round the back of the net and hit a shot off Brett Jaeger, assisted by Dowd and Bolibruck.
On the powerplay, Blaze started to make Steelers net minder Mustukova earn his keep, with two great saves but they trailed at the end of the first period.
Apart from a couple of incidents of handbags behind Brett Jaeger's goal, the second half was pretty tame until the 35th minute when Owen was given ten minutes for complaining to referee Darnell who had been loudly booed by the Blaze fans at the start of the game.
Sheffield made the most of their numerical advantage and on 37.52, Clark made it 2-0 when he scored assisted by Simon and Thomas.
The Blaze kept going and on 49.47, Greg Chambers pulled one back Coventry with an unassisted goal which saw him shoot, miss and then react to his own rebound before smashing it into the net.
Boosted by this, they were level on on 55.12 when Russ Cowley scored, assisted by Zanon and Owen.
The joy was not to last as Sheffield went straight up the other end and scored what proved to be the winning goal, forty seconds later through Tait, assisted by Dowd and Johnson.
On Saturday, The Blaze travel to Hull Stingrays before taking on Newcastle Vipers at home on Sunday.
Picture from the game copyright and courtesy of CJ.