STEVIE Lyle lauded the Swindon Wildcats’ best performance of the season as they put Sheffield Steeldogs to the sword tonight.

The Cats have had an indifferent start to the new Elite League campaign, with four wins and five defeats from their opening nine fixtures.

However, it proved to be perfect number 10 for Lyle’s men as they crushed Sheffield 11-1 at the Link Centre this evening.

“All in all, I thought we stuck to our systems and it was our best performance. We put 60 minutes together tonight, that was the most pleasing thing for me,” said player/coach Lyle.

“It helped that they were missing two key guys, two of their imports, so even though it’s a very positive win for us we can’t get too high about it.

“Their goalie made a couple of key saves, like he always does, but the way they were playing you could tell they were there for the taking. They were playing a bit too deep and too defensively.

“I said to the guys that they would start running around a bit and start one or two fights, as they have a couple of tough guys, and try to put us off our game but none of them dropped their gloves and the most important thing is the win and seeing the scoreboard.”

Tomasz Malasinski led the way for the Cats with a hat-trick of goals, while new recruit Carlo Finucci was also on target on debut having only arrived in Swindon earlier this week.

Lyle was quick to praise the influence of both players and believes everything is now starting to click into place for his side.

“Tomasz is a very good hockey player, we are very lucky to have him in our team,” said Lyle.

“We’ve found our lines now, Carlo has come in this week and I have an extra energy guy on the first, I have an energy guy on the second (Malasinski) and Corey (McEwen) on the third.

“I have got a nice balance there now on every line and guys are realising what roles they are meant to be doing out there, which we saw tonight.

“Carlo was great but I expected that. I had 10 or 15 guys to pick from and there were guys with better resumes than him but I just felt that he was the missing piece to our puzzle right now.

“He is going to play like that every night whether it’s home or away, and that’s what’s going to go a long way in the league this year.”