Bison reach milestone

BASINGSTOKE, UK – The Bison will hope that Saturday night will be a cause for celebration as the club’s reaches another milestone in its history with their 1,000th league game.
They want to chalk up win 452 and not loss 506 while the other 43 games have been tied.
This was from when they played in a league which did not played overtime or penalty shoot-outs.
Standing between the Herd and victory are the Peterborough Phantoms and also the fact that the team are suffering a huge injury crisis with seven players doubtful for the game.
Three more Marcel Petran, Ollie Bronnimann and Craig Tribe were added to list after a monumental victory at Peterborough last weekend.
Viktor Kubenko, Dan Harris, Sam Oakford and Tony Redmond had already been scratched from the line-up.
The home side raced into a 2-0 lead as man-of-the-match Maris Ziedins scored twice only for Daniel Volrab and Nicky Chinn to tie the game.
The second session saw Chris Wiggins edge the Herd in front only for Tom Carlon and Chris Allen to do the same for the Phantoms.
Steve Moria tied the game early in the final period, but Jeff Glowa and Carlon looked to have made the game safe at 6-4 with seven minutes left.
However, the never say die Bison clawed their way back as Joe Miller and Moria sent the game into overtime.
The extra session saw the Herd have to kill off a powerplay after a rare Moria penalty (only his sixth of the season).
Then thanks to Volrab and Moria they won the penalty shoot-out as former Bison Ondrej Lauko and Carlon could not find a way past Matt Colclough.
“This was a great victory. It is hard to put into words as we had so few players at the end, but the guys did not give-up and we got the victory,” said Bison player/coach Steve Moria.
A double delight for the Bison was that the win finally moved them up the EPL standings to fifth as they went above the Milton Keynes Lightning by a point, but their Buckinghamshire rivals do have two games in hand.
With just one game this weekend, the Herd will be keen to win which should keep them in that fifth spot.
“We will have to see which guys are in the line-up on Saturday and take it from there. We have a lot of guys logging up a lot of ice time at the moment and playing really well I hope that continued,” said Moria.
Victory over the Phantoms would be the Herd’s fifth home win on the trot.
Last weekend, the Bison made it four victories on the bounce after a 3-1 local derby victory over the Bracknell Bees.
Basingstoke opened the scoring from captain Nicky Chinn at 11:09 and then doubled their advantage in the second session as Kubenko beat former Bison netminder Tom Annetts.
The visitors set up a tense finish when Matt Foord scored with less then three minutes, but Petran empty netter sealed the victory and meant home rule continued in the series which Basingstoke lead 3-2.
Contact the author Graham.Merry@Prohockeynews.com