Healthy option for Steelers boss Fox

ICE HOCKEY: While Aaron Fox will have rightly felt pleased at his Sheffield Steelers team being Christmas No 1, he will have been quietly hoping for a different kind of festive wish to come true heading into the second half of what is developing into an enthralling Elite League title race.

Ahead of Steelers’ showdown at FlyDSA Arena against Manchester Storm today (4pm), Fox’s team hold a two-point advantage over Cardiff Devils, with defending champions Belfast Giants a further two points back.

All Steelers’ head coach and general manager Fox is hoping for come the turn of the year is for his team to stay and, more importantly, get healthy.

Fox has three first-choice defenceme missing in the shape of player-assistant coach Aaron Johnson, Jonas Liwing and James Bettauer while, more recently, British forward Robert Dowd suffered a potentially season-ending injury in Saturday’s 5-3 home win over Glasgow Clan.

While Dowd’s return is unlikely until the very final throes of the campaign - if at all - Fox will hope to see some positive movement over the coming weeks regarding his other three other injured warriors.

“For the run here, we’ve just got to stay healthy and try to find our groove a little bit,” explained Fox.

“We’ve had a different line-up every night, we haven’t played with 14 imports at all this year, even though we’ve carried a couple extra but that’s been because of the injuries we’ve suffered.

“For us, it’s about finding a way to get healthy and playing to our identity every night and producing a little bit more consistency.”