BASINGSTOKE UK: The Bison are closing in on their first championship season since 1993 as they gear up for the penultimate weekend of regular season action.
The Herd need two wins from their final four games to take the title and end the hopes of play-off champions Peterborough Phantoms and the Guildford Flames.
First up for Basingstoke is a trip to Shropshire to face the reigning league champions Telford and when they last face the Tigers on the road they lost. So they will hope there will be no repeat of this on Saturday.
On Sunday the Bison return to their own barn which in recent week’s has seen near capacity crowds to face locals rivals Swindon, who have yet to have in Basingstoke this season, but in both games they have been without their starting goalie Stevie Lyle.
The former Bison cageman is expect to face his old foes this weekend, but it may still not be enough to stop the Bison.
“The players know what they have to do and we are playing two very good sides, so it is not going to be easy. We are on a good winning run at the moment and I want us to continue this,” said Bison head coach Doug Sheppard.
Last weekend, the Herd entertained the Hull Pirates in a game which was expected to be a lot closer than the 10-0 it ended up.
Herd defenceman Declan Balmer scored his first hat-trick since his junior days and almost doubled his goals tally from four to seven for the season.
The Brit netted three times from the blue line as the home side over ran the visitors 4-0, 4-0, 2-0 as Jon Baston and Dan Weller-Evans shared a 21 shot shut-out the club’s ninth of the season, which was a new club and league record.
The Herd never looked back after scoring three in as many minutes from Aaron Connolly, Balmer and Lack and then Lack netted again to complete the first period scoring.
In the middle session Balmer again hit the back of the net, before Ciaran Long and Matt Towalski extended the advantage to 7-0.
This saw the end of Ashley Smith and he was replaced by Martins Raitums who was beaten with his first shot from Tomas Karpov.
The last 20 minutes saw two more goals as Joe Greener scored before Balmer wrapped up his hat-trick.
Dan Lackey was unlucky no to score his first goal of the season as he put the puck in the net only fro it to be washed out as the net was off its moorings.
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