Saturday night saw another chapter in the storied rivalry between THE NOTTINGHAM Panthers and Sheffield Steelers as the teams clashed in a game with huge permutations at the top of the Elite League standings.
Sheffied killed an early penalty to Michael Davies before he gave the Steelers the lead (6.06), the forward finishing off a nice passing sequence at the top of Carr’s crease.
Gui Lepine picked up a roughing penalty during the Steelers’ goal celebrations when he got into an altercation with Brendan Connolly but Nottingham killed the visitors powerplay opportunity.
Nottingham lost Jullian Talbot (10.59) for the remainder of the period after he was assessed a two plus ten penalty for checking to the head, the Panthers successfully killing the penalty.
When Sheffield were called for having too-many-men on the ice the home side struck through Adam Deutsch (13.51), the Swede continuing his recent trend of scoring the Panthers’ first goal at home since his return from injury as he brat Duba at the second attempt through traffic.
Nottingham killed the majority of a holding penalty given to Danny Fick (18.49) but went into the second period with work still to do on the penalty kill.
Sheffield, however, had other ideas and they capitalised on the man advantage when Marc-Oliver Vallerand (20.33) hit the back of the net.
Nottingham failed to take advantage of their turn on the penalty after Captain Sam Herr was hauled down as he broke in goal and the Steelers made the Panthers pay, Anthony DeLuca (28.21) forcing the puck across the line.
Things got even better for the visitors when Lucas Sandtrom (38.33) scored, just after the Steelers killed a Panthers’ powerplay, to make it 1-4 and leave Nottingham with a mountain to climb in the third period.
Brendan Connolly (42.25) all but sealed the points for Sheffield when he shot through a screen and into the back of Carr’s goal.
Georgs Golovkovs (43.34) showed great patience to pick his spot and beat Duba to bring the Panthers back within three but 26 seconds later Sandstrom got his second of the night when he tapped in at the back door to see Saturday’s Elite League game fall in favour of the Steelers.
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