Steelers hit nine past Stars

Photo: Dean Woolley

Sheffield Steelers logged a shutout home win for the second successive Sunday with a 9-0 thrashing of Dundee Stars.

“I thought we were fantastic,” began Steelers captain Robert Dowd. “We set the tone and we’ve come into a really good patch where we have a lot of players scoring goals."

The hosts opened the scoring through captain Robert Dowd, tipping home a pass from Mitchell Balmas for his 400th Elite Ice Hockey League goal. Five minutes later the Steelers doubled their advantage - a pass retrieval from Mitchell Heard saw the puck end up on the stick of Brett Ritchie, who toe-dragged around a Dundee defenceman and finished high blocker on Jarrett Fiske.

"It's nice to break these milestones, but I'm focussed on us getting the points tonight," said Dowd. "I'm not one of these people that looks at milestones, the only times I realise I'm close to one is when my social media gets notifications!"

With five minutes remaining in the period, the Steelers added a third as Ritchie danged through two Stars defencemen and past Fiske to finish into an empty net.

After a quiet opening seven minutes to the second period, the Steelers picked up a fourth with Ivan Bjorkly Nordstrom finishing low glove on Fiske. Kyle Watson then scored the fifth of the night off a feed from Samuel Tremblay for his first professional goal.

“It’s awesome, it’s what you dream of when you’re a little kid to score at the arena!” said Watson. “It’s a huge honour and something I can hopefully build off. When you have such a big crowd like this, you want to send them home happy and we were clinical tonight. If we can keep playing like that, we can put a push on Belfast at the top.”

The Steelers rounded off the period with a powerplay goal from Mitchell Heard to make it 6-0.

A shorthanded goal early in the third extended the lead when Mikko Juusola poked home the rebound. Evan Jasper tapped in from the top of the crease to make it eight before Stephen Harper’s tip-in completed the scoring at nine.

"It's fantastic for us to have the true pathway to come through into the Steelers," added Dowd. "It's starting to pay dividends now, we can see players forging their paths and I'm over the moon for both Kyle and Ivan to have scored tonight."