Sheffield Steelers coach Aaron Fox on summer recruitment and the expected turnover of grand slam stars

Head coach Aaron Fox is confident, however, that the overhaul will be less than seen in the previous two close-seasons.

Forward Brett Neumann and defenceman Niklas Nevalainen have already announced their intentions to move on, but Fox expects to be filling in the blanks from a position of strength in the coming weeks.

Talismanic defenceman Kevin Tansey has already committed for two more years, with captain Robert Dowd – who led his team to a grand slam in his first season wearing the ‘C’ – has long been in place.

The kind of success the Steelers have enjoyed in recent months can work both ways, making their players more attractive propositions for clubs elsewhere – most likely in Europe – while also potentially attracting better players to South Yorkshire.

Given recruitment is considered one of Fox’s main strengths, the close-season could be viewed as one of his favourite periods of the year, doing the deals necessary to ensure his team is a genuine contender once again when the puck drops in September.

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Fox acknowledges, though, that it will be no simple task to put together a roster as strong as the one he had last time out.

“There is no blueprint for replicating the type of season we had,” said Fox. “But I feel like the pieces we are bringing back are good pieces and if I can do a good job filling in the gaps then I think we’ll be in a real good spot to start the year

“So the work starts again, you can’t be complacent, you can’t think it’s going to be easy, you’ve got to play winning hockey from September and that isn’t easy.

“This organisation does an unbelievable job of taking care of its guys, at the rink and away from the rink. So it’s a very good situation for players to come into."

Given he has just steered the Steelers to their first grand slam since 2001, Fox is also fully aware of the expectations going into the next campaign.

"Expectations are always going to be high for this group, no matter what we’ve done the year before,” he added.

"For us, again, we’ll set the exact same goals when guys come in that we did this year and we’ll need the same kind of things to go right for us again in order to be successful.

“I love the group we’ve got coming back up-to-date but, as we’ve already seen, it is not going to be everybody. Niki (Nevalainen) isn’t coming back, he’s gone back to Finland and Neums took a job in Switzerland – so it’s very clear that we’re not going to run back with the same group.

“I feel like we’ve got a pretty good core group of guys who will be back next year, so I can be a little bit more selective and patient on things this summer, which is nice, whereas the turnover was a bit higher the last couple of years.”