With Coventry Blaze otherwise engaged in Continental Cup action over in Bolzano, Italy, where they came agonisingly close to making the Super Final, only being edged out by the host team by 1-0 in a tense winner-takes-all encounter on Sunday, it gave the other teams the opportunity to make ground in the standings and Sheffield Steelers did just that over the weekend by taking three points from a shootout loss in Belfast (2-3) and a road win in Newcastle (4-3) to take over the pole position.

Steelers have now picked up points from their last eight league games and now lead the pack by a point. However lurking very ominously are those Belfast Giants, who are now only three points adrift of Steelers but have two games in hand. Giants followed on from the shootout success against Steelers by seeing off the challenge of Edinburgh Capitals on Saturday night by 5-2, despite being without two of their leading scorers in Paul Deniset and Bobby Robins through injury.

Level on points with Giants but having played three games more are Nottingham Panthers but they had a off par weekend indeed. On Saturday they lost their grip on the Challenge Cup, going down 5-3 in Basingstoke in a real shock and then back on league business the next night it took a penalty shootout to see them gain both points against bottom club Hull Stingrays.

A great weekend for the Manchester Phoenix saw them pick up four points with a 5-0 blanking of Hull on Saturday and then a 6-4 win in Scotland the next night. Player coach Tony Hand MBE, has now skated to the brink of that 4,000 point domestic milestone and he needs only one point at Hull on Saturday to hit the mark.

In the other games over the weekend, Cardiff picked up both points against a Basingstoke side running on empty on Sunday and Challenge Cup Group A saw the group matches concluded with Newcastle picking up a welcome win in Sheffield with both sides taking the opportunity to ice their back up goaltenders.

Players in the spotlight over the weekend were:-
Mike Burgoyne with 0+3 for Belfast against Sheffield
David Beauregard 2+1 for Manchester against Hull
Stephen Murphy of Manchester posting a 22 shot shutout in the same game
Andrej Rajcak with 3+0 for Edinburgh against Manchester
Tony Hand 2+1, David Beauregard 1+2 and Luke Fulghum 0+3 for Manchester in Scotland
Ed Courtenay 1+2 for Newcastle against Sheffield
Randy Dagenais 2+1 for Sheffield @ Newcastle
Danny Meyers 2+1 for Nottingham at home to Hull
Jeff Glowa of Hull 1+2 @ Nottingham
Shaun Thompson 1+2 and Greg Chambers 2+2 for Basingstoke v Nottingham
Jeff Legue of Sheffield 1+2 v Newcastle
Ben Campbell and Jeff Hutchins 2+1 for Newcastle in Sheffield


However, Player of the Week time and we found it pretty tough to pick our guy this week. "But we've made a decision" (copyright S Cowell) and the award this week goes to..... Greg Chamber of Basingstoke Bison. Despite Bison not having their problems to seek this season Chambers' form has been immense throughout and he currently leads both the league and overall scoring charts. He also played a key part in knocking defending champions Nottingham panthers out of the Challenge Cup on Saturday and in reality his award is probably well overdue.

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