BASINGSTOKE, UK- After suffering their first winless weekend of the season, the Basingstoke Bison will be keen to turn that around this Saturday.
However, standing in their way are title chasing Guildford Flames, who are looking for a third league victory over the Herd this campaign. The previous two encounters have been close with Surrey side winning them 7-6 and 3-2 after overtime.
This week the Flames have added import defenseman Jeremy Van Hoof to their roster to give them even more depth. The Dutch Canadian has twice been drafted in the NHL for Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay and now gives the club six D men.
They also have the top goalie in league in Miroslav Hala, but with a limit of only being able to ice four imports in a game in the EPL, it will be interesting to see what their foreign quartet is going to be on Saturday.
You would expect Van Hoof to make his debut, but then again do you upset a winning side that enjoyed back-to-back victories over leaders Manchester last weekend.
Meanwhile in the Herd camp they still have their injury crisis to contend with as Tony Redmond, Ciaran Long, Sam Oakford and Daniel Lackey are all still sidelined. However many of the remaining members of the Bison will be looking upset their former club.
“Guildford are a fast and skilful team with a lot of talent. We know we will have to play at top of our game if we are going to get a result from Saturday’s game,” said Bison player/coach Steve Moria.
The following day the Bison travel to Telford looking to complete a clean sweep of road wins over the Tigers. First time around it was a very comfortable 6-0 success and on their last visit Basingstoke won 6-3.
Last weekend, Telford slipped to the bottom of the EPL after a double defeat at the hands of the fast improving Milton Keynes Lightning. The Tigers are currently in the scrap for what looks like the final play-off spot with Sheffield and Bracknell.
“Telford are a really hard working team and we will have to be ready from the first drop of the puck if we want to win,” said Moria.
Last weekend, Basingstoke had just one point to show for their efforts and that came on Sunday against the Swindon Wildcats as they lost in overtime 2-1. Ex-Bison boss Ryan Aldridge now head man at Swindon scored the winner with a superb strike from the left wing. The game was a close affair from start to finish with Ondrej Lauko putting the Herd in front with the first goal.
Captain Nicky Chinn picked up a point on that goal for his 100th league assist for the club and so joins that small club of Tony Redmond and Nicky Iandoli of Brits who have chalked up a century of assists. Swindon then drew level with the only goal of the second session from Jonas Hoog. They scored it on the powerplay with home goalie Dean Skinns completely screened. No further scoring saw the game go into overtime and that man Aldridge ended Basingstoke’s home winning streak at nine.
Previous to the Swindon defeat, the Bison also suffered a 5-3 loss in Slough as they were unable to repeat their 7-3 victory from the week before. The Jets had new Canadian hot-shot Adam Calder making his debut and he set-up the opening goal for former Bison Shaun Thompson.
Another Slough player who has pulled on a Basingstoke jersey in the past Slava Koulikov doubled the advantage and then Dan Davies made it 3-0 right on the second period buzzer. The visitors looked out of the contest, but amazingly 10 minutes later they were level thanks to Steve Moria and a brace from man-of-the-match Viktor Kubenko.
Unfortunately at that point Bison’s Andy Hemmings took a harsh penalty in the eyes of player/coach Moria and Slough regained the lead thanks to Jan Krajicek, before Joe Greener completed the 5-3 victory.
“I think we played well in both games over the past weekend and create a lot of scoring opportunities, but did not convert as many as we would have liked. That has gone now and we move onto the next games,” said Moria.
Contact the author Graham.Merry@Prohockeynews.com
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