Aaron Fox is calling on the Elite League’s top four to make the Belfast Giants “earn” the regular-season title.
But Saturday’s results saw the momentum shift even further in favour of Adam Keefe’s crew.
The Sheffield Steelers fell in overtime to the Guildford Flames, while the Nottingham Panthers were humbled by a 5-1 scoreline in Manchester against the Storm.
As a result, the Giants remain six points clear at the summit, with a game-in-hand over both Sheffield and the Cardiff Devils.
Welcome to Around the Rinks, our daily summary of every team’s post-game media remarks.
Around the Rinks: Saturday, 21 February
Guildford Flames 2-1 Sheffield Steelers (Overtime)
Eamon McAdam, Sheffield Steelers (Image: John Uwins)
Andrew Hemmings, Guildford Flames:
Firstly, it was a great game of hockey. Shoutout to both goalies: they were both outstanding tonight. I think that was probably one of the most complete sixty five minutes of the season. Credit to the guys and we look forwards to tomorrow.
Aaron Fox, Sheffield Steelers:
Disappointed we didn’t get the two points. We’re trying to stick around and make sure that Belfast earns [the title] down the stretch: we’ve got them three times in the next six games and we want those games to matter.
I actually really loved our first period tonight: we could’ve had two or three for sure. It then turned into a bit of a greasy game, where you’re worried about how it’s going to end up. In the third period, we were really good. I can’t fault our effort, compete, or how we played on the road today.
Dundee Stars 2-4 Coventry Blaze
Grayson Constable, Coventry Blaze (Image: Derek Black)
Marc LeFebvre, Dundee Stars:
I didn’t think we were engaged until we scored our second goal: we were kinda floating around for the first 35 minutes or so. After that, we picked up our play and played with more urgency. Like so much of our season, we couldn’t score at key times. We had some posts and breakaways, but didn’t make them pay for their mistakes.
You can’t start late and we weren’t engaged from the start. We played hard in the second half, but we’ve got to score more on the powerplay in key moments. We’ve got to be ready to start on time.
Kevin Moore, Coventry Blaze:
I really loved our team’s mentality tonight. In the end, it ended up being a really weird game, with all of the special teams play. It discombobulates you a bit, so it was really good for Matthew Gleason to get us on the board short-handed.
It helped us deal with the weirdness and play our game. [Alessio Luciani] was great tonight. I loved our mentality and I’m proud of the group for sticking together and finding a way.
Glasgow Clan 4-1 Fife Flyers
Chris McKay, Glasgow Clan (Image: Al Goold)
Mike Sirant, Glasgow Clan:
That’s another big win for us in against a local rival. It’s important that we win this game and keep pace with other teams in the middle of the table. They all won tonight, so it’s key that we got those two points to keep up.
Fife came out and played well. Their goalie played really well and they came to play. I thought our goalie played really well too and made some big saves.
We really stepped up on the penalty kill: we showed courage and it got us through a tough time at the end of the game. Scoring timely goals at the start of the third period made the difference for us.
Jamie Russell, Fife Flyers:
I thought our guys competed hard. We’re essentially playing with half a roster and we had a couple of young guys make mistakes that ended up in the back of our net.
Manchester Storm 5-1 Nottingham Panthers
Brady Gilmour, Manchester Storm (Image: Mark Ferriss)
Cam Critchlow, Manchester Storm:
It was a great win. Throughout the whole team, it was a really good performance. Nottingham came at us really hard in the first ten minutes and [Drew] DeRidder kept us in it. They’re a strong team and they come ready to play every night: that’s their identity and that’s why they are where they are.
Drew weathered the storm for us and we scored three big goals in the first period. It’s good to see them clicking. I thought it was a solid game by us all round. I liked our maturity and compete in the third period. It should give us a lot of confidence going into Coventry tomorrow.
Danny Stewart, Nottingham Panthers:
It’s obviously a disappointing result, but I don’t necessarily think our performance was. We talk about it a lot: this building is a tough place to come and a lot of crazy things can happen here. That’s what happened tonight.
In the first ten minutes, we had six or seven grade-a [scoring chances] and their guy made some great stops to keep us at zero.
Our penalty kill kind of let us down tonight. It’s been pretty solid this year, one of the best in the league, but we weren’t with it tonight. Our shot lanes weren’t great and we didn’t protect our goalie enough.
Being 4-0 down after one, it’s not a position our guys are used to being in. We dominated the second, but only scored one. If we scored two, it’s maybe a different game but we couldn’t find a way.
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