A dominant display from Red Bull Salzburg held them to an impressive 8-1 win over the Sheffield Steelers in the Mozart City tonight. Read more in Gamecentre.

A tight opening period saw both sides trade good chances with the game played at a frantic pace, Steelers' netminder Ervins Mustukovs called into action to make some smart saves early on. The score stayed level until Sheffield's Achilles heel from the HV71 game kicked in – taking penalties. William Thomas scoring at 15:35 on the power play to put the Red Bulls ahead shortly before the break.

Period two started as a dream for the hosts, and a disaster for the visitors. Manuel Latusa scored just under a minute on another power play to make it two, and Thomas followed up two minutes later to put the hosts three ahead with less than 25 minutes played. Sheffield needed a response and, playing with a man advantage, got one through Christoffer Bjorklund around the 26-minute mark. The scored stayed at 3-1 until 37:58, when Tommy Raffl netted net to put Salzburg 4-1 ahead with 40 minutes played.

The final period was somewhat of a walkover for the home side. Four unanswered goals as Sheffield tired and continued to take minors saw the hosts run out 8-1 winners in the end, will the star of the game being the aforementioned Thomas who help himself to four goals on the night.

"I am very happy for sure," said tonight's CRAMO Top Scorer. "Not only with my own performance – my linemates worked really fantastic and the whole team was great! It was my first hat-trick in my pro career!"

Salzburg head coach Greg Poss was equally happy, saying afterwards, "I am very satisfied because of the shots we put in and the traffic generated make 'dirty goals'. Today there were less opportunities for the opponent on breakaways, which we've done a lot of work on this week. However, it's only one match, and we must stay respectful."

The same containment could not be said for Steelers' boss Paul Thompson. "Our discipline wasn't good enough. We took penalty after penalty after penalty, which was very disappointing," he said. "We played well against HV71 and some players thought tonight was gonna be an easy game." Asked what his side can do to improve in future games, Thompson said simply: "Get rid of the players who took stupid penalties."