Milton Keynes Lightning welcome Sheffield Steeldogs to the Thunderdome this Saturday aiming to set a winning trend against the Yorkshire team, at the start of three meetings in four weeks for the two sides.  The draw for the English Premier League Cup semi finals means Lightning will face Steeldogs twice in February in a two-leg aggregate score decider.

When the two sides last met in November, supporters enjoyed a feisty game where Lightning took the two points - but the fixture marked the beginning of an eight-match absence for Grant McPherson with a shoulder injury after an incident with Sheffield’s Steve Duncombe.

The Steeldogs climbed to a competitive second in the league table before Christmas while an inconsistent run of form saw Lightning fall to fourth.  Since then, fortunes have been reversed,  with Nick Poole’s men winning regularly and taking full advantage of losses for Slough Jets and Guildford Flames, to become serious contenders for this year’s league title.

Speaking ahead of Saturday’s league clash, Lightning player-coach Poole said the team is under no illusions about the threat posed by Andre Payette’s combative side.  “They’ll give us another very physical game but we’re ready for it.  They worked us very hard when they came here in November, but we won and we want to make that the start of a pattern.  Our top line is firing on all cylinders – Leigh Jamieson, Blaz Emersic and Juraj Gracik are in terrific form, and goals are coming regularly from the other lines too.

“Andre will have his guys all fired up to try and bring us down a peg or two, no doubt about that.  But we’re fired up too –there’s a lot of confidence in the dressing room here.  Our supporters have been fantastic recently – against Guildford last week, we had our biggest attendance in a long, long time and the noise was unbelievable!  It’d be great to see as many of those fans as possible back in the rink this Saturday, making that noise all over again.”

“We guarantee that both sets of fans will get great value for money on Saturday in terms of entertainment, but we’ll be out to see that our fans get a better return on their investment!”

MK Lightning is again advising supporters to avoid queuing on matchnight by buying tickets in advance at the Planet Ice ticket office during any public skating session until the end of Friday.

The doors open at the Planet Ice Arena at 6.00pm on Saturday 21 January with the teams on the ice to warm up from 6.15pm, and face-off at 7.00pm.