Sheffield Steelers 2-1 London Racers

Sheffield missing Ryan Lake (back) and Brent Bobyck (elbow), Joe Ciccarello made his home debut and scored.

At times only Racers' goalie Sylvain Daigle kept London in this game as Sheffield win more comfortably than the scoreline suggests.

Sheffield laid siege to the Racers net throughout the first but Sylvain Daigle was in fine form, being beaten just once by Daryl Andrews' shot through traffic (3.10). Racers saw off two penalties and during that second short-handed spell might have equalised when Ian McIntyre found Steve Moria close in but Jayme Platt got his left pad across just in time.

At the other end Anderson was blanked twice close-in and Ciccarello flipped a rebound over the bar from Jeff Christian's right wing shot.

Racers defence gave Daigle better protection in the middle period, but Racers had a let-off 6 minutes in when Anderson hit the underside of the bar from point-blank range.

Anderson was blanked again early in the third, then Moria blasted wide when well-placed.

Mark Thomas intercepted a lob but the puck bobbled to Christian who went straight to the near post before finding Ciccarello at the back door and he squeezed the puck home (47.43). But this only fired up London and Dennis Maxwell fired home from the right after noticing Platt was unsighted (48.24).

But Racers were unable to test Platt further until the final five minutes. Platt blanked Dusan Halloun's wraparound. Seconds later player-coach Dennis Maxwell earned a 10 minute misconduct from the bench after objecting to an offside call (57.44).

London lifted Daigle with 64 seconds left and 10 seconds later called a timeout. But as Maxwell was in the penalty box he couldn't participate and Platt didn't have to make a save.