SHEFFIELD – It was seventh heaven for the Steelers on Boxing Day in Sheffield as four goals from Anthony DeLuca and a third shutout of the season for Tomas Duba gifted the perfect present to a bumper Sheffield Steelers crowd.
8,427 were packed into the FlyDSA for a night of festive fun and for sure they got more than their monies worth on Thursday afternoon.
Proceedings began in a similar style to the last time Manchester visited the Steel city and Anthony DeLuca put on the jets to get by his man and fired past Matt Ginn (03:15)
A second goal wasn’t far away and DeLuca made it two moments later at 05:24, he capped off a period of Steelers pressure to light the lamp.
For the next thirty minutes, it was a different game. A few clashes amongst players in front of both goalies, high-quality goal-scoring chances were few and far between but the Steelers never lost control of the game.
Without the injured forward Robert Dowd, who had made it home from surgery on his shoulder just in time for Christmas, goals in the Steelers favour were definitely not hard to come by.
Two became three when Brendan Connolly flipped the puck past Ginn after hard work from DeLuca to win the puck back and feed his linemate out at the top of the blue paint. (34:11)
The slickest passing play of the night was capped off by Marco Vallerand who tapped into the empty net after a tic-tac-toe passing play from the Steelers top line.
Connelly found DeLuca who showed patience to wait for the onrushing Vallerand to enter the paint and tap home at 37:12.
DeLuca made a great pass from behind the goal which fooled Ginn and Vally again popped the water bottle making it 5-0 with almost a full period left to play (41:07).
With the Steelers on a delayed penalty, DeLuca broke through on goal but was hooked back in the process and a penalty shot was called by the officials.
In search of his hattrick, DeLuca would take the shot himself, going low blocker and completed his hattrick in style. The hats rained down from the crowd and the forward didn’t stop here (44:47).
Will Kerlin was sent out to replace Tomas Duba in the Steelers goal with 12 minutes to play, at the same time Ryan Finnerty swapped his goalies too.
The scoring ended when Anthony DeLuca completed his seven-point game, a glove-side slapshot past Adam Long that the relief goaltender could only get a piece of (54:29).
A Christmas cracker well and truly served up on a Thursday afternoon.
Photos by Mick Johnson
@MickGta
Michael.Johnson@prohockeynews.com
@prohockeynews.com
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