Video - Sheffield Steelers 3 Fife Flyers 4 (Steelers win 7-6 on agg) Steelers hold their nerve to edge through to last four

Jason Hewitt, scored Sheffield Steelers' first goal against Fife Flyers on Wednesday night. Picture: Dean Woolley.

Fife won 4-3 in the second leg of the quarter-finals at Ice Sheffield last night, but it was not enough to overturn Steelers’ 4-2 first leg win in Kirkcaldy last week.

Nico Sacchetti fired the Scottish club in front at 6.47 before Jason Hewitt levelled for the hosts – missing Guillaume Desbiens with an upper-body injury – six minutes later.

Ryan Dingle restored Fife’s lead early in the second, only for Conny Stromberg to net his first Steelers’ goal just after the halfway mark.

A third Fife goal came the stick of Nicholas Rious just 32 seconds later but – once again – the hosts levelled, Levi Nelson pouncing at 38.28.

Kyle Haines made it 4-3 early in the third, but the Steelers held on for a 7-6 aggregate win.

Afterwards, Steelers head coach Paul Thompson admitted his side had been second-best on the night.

“It’s a bitter-sweet feeling in a way because I didn’t think we were very good,” said Thompson.

“Marek Pinc didn’t have a great night in Cardiff but I thought he bounced back well for us against Fife – he made some key, point-blank saves and I didn’t think we played too well around him at times.

“I hate these kind of games - second leg games – but we’ve been pretty good in this competition so far this season. Overall, we’re eight and two from the 10 games we’ve played and now we’ve got to play two more to get to the final.

“Our powerplay which has been looking really good lately was laboured against Fife, everything we did looked laboured.

“But good teams find a way to get through and that is exactly what we did tonight.”

Although he refused to use it as an excuse, Thompson said the Steelers camp had been hit by a flu bug earlier this week, including Nelson, the scorer of that all-important third goal for the hosts.

“The flu bug has been going around and I could that there was no energy,” he added.

“But Levi got up out of his bed that he’d been in for two days and he scored that crucial goal that got us into the last four.”

Desbiens, who has proved a welcome addition to the Steelers line-up since arriving in November, revealed during an in-house interview during the course of Wednesday night’s game, that he had been ruled out of this weekend’s games against Cardiff Devils and Dundee Stars.