Sheffield Steelers taking it one day at a time on Elite League weekend road trip to Dundee Stars and Belfast Giants

But Steelers’ head coach Aaron Fox insists he will not let his players give one thought to that mouthwatering encounter until after the final buzzer goes on their first road game of the weekend at Dundee Stars.

That is because they head to Tayside to face a Stars team who, under former Steelers forward and assistant coach Marc LeFebvre, currently sit third in the standings and with some notable scalps already - including Belfast and Guildford (twice).

The Steelers got back to winning ways last Sunday after the previous weekend’s loss to Glasgow Clan with an impressive 6-2 win on the road against the Flames, backing that up with a 4-2 midweek win at Ice Sheffield over Manchester Storm which guaranteed them top seed status in the knockout stages of the Challenge Cup.

That result saw Dundee exit the competition, leaving them to concentrate all their efforts on the league and the play-offs.

Fox, pleased with his players’ ability to bounce back immediately from the Clan setback, is aware of how important Sunday’s trip to Northern Ireland is but says nobody in the Steelers’ camp will be getting ahead of themselves.

“We’ve got to be well-prepared and ready to go,” said Fox. “We’ll move our focus to Dundee right now and then we know that Sunday is going to be a huge game in Belfast. They’ve added a couple of guys since we last played them and we know we’ll see a team that’s a little bit different.

“Dundee had won four out of five (before losing 5-2 to Cardiff on Wednesday) so they are definitely oplaying better hockey.

“We know we’re going to have to be at our best all weekend to take the points and I expect us to be ready to go.”