BASINGSTOKE, UK – Tony Redmond reached another landmark in his long and illustrious career in Basingstoke on Sunday night, when he netted his 150th league game for the club.
The 37-year-old Scot became the first British player to reach that total as he netted the Bison’s third goal in their victory over the visiting Slough Jets – ironically one of his former teams.
The next highest British goal scorer at the club ahead of former players Nicky Iandoli with 106 and Anthony Page on 78.
The next landmark that Redmond will be after will be if he can score eight more goals.
This will make him the fourth highest league goal scorer in the club’s history taking that honour from Canadian Mario Belanger who scored 157.
After that the top three who are also all Canadians are long way ahead with Kevin Conway leading the list on 366, ahead of Don Yewchin 302 and Tim Salmon on 217.
Having not missed a league game this season, Redmond is also still on target to be the first player in the club’s history to reach 500 league games when he steps onto the ice in the last game of this current campaign.
Away from Redmond’s achievement at the weekend, the Bison enjoyed a four point weekend as they won in Milton Keynes 5-1 breaking their duck against the Lightning.
They then beat the Slough Jets 5-4 in a shoot-out on home ice after trailing four times in the contest.
The victory in MK came about thanks to a great second session in which the Bison scored four times, while only giving up one in reply.
The Herd took the lead 20 seconds into the middle period from Ollie Bronnimann and the same Kent-based forward made it 2-0.
Michael Wales pulled a goal back for the home side, but further second period strikes from Daniel Volrab and Sam Oakford on the powerplay put the Herd firmly in control.
It was left to Steve Moria to complete the excellent victory with the only goal of the last period and so extend his side’s winning run on the road to seven games.
”It was great to score four goals in one period against a team I feel are the best defensively in the league. When I scored the fifth that ended the game as a contest.
“We have not played bad against MK all season, but this time we got the result our efforts deserved,” said Moria.
The following night, the Bison were looking to break a record of having not scored in 121 minutes as they faced the Slough Jets on home ice.
The visitors opened the scoring from Darius Pliskauskas and just when it looked like the Herd would go another period without scoring Joe Miller netted on a powerplay at 17:30.
The second session saw Ryan Watt give the Jets the lead again, but the PP did its job again for the Bison as Daniel Volrab scored.
The Jets took the lead for a third time as Pliskauskas scored, but this time Redmond tied the game at 3-3 going into the third.
A super individual strike from Watt gave Slough the lead again and with seven minutes left a Marcel Petran special from the blue line tied things again.
With no further scoring the game went into overtime which the home side started on powerplay, but could not make it pay so the game was decided by a shoot-out.
Bronnimann was up first and scored through the legs of Gregg Rockman and Dan Davies did the same for Slough against Stephen Wall.
Moria with a nice deke made it 2-1 and then Pliskauskas could only find the shoulder of Wall with his shot.
Miller then fired wide for the Bison as the tension mounted and when Wall picked the pocket of Watt as he skated in on goal with an excellent poke check Basingstoke were back to winning ways on home ice.
“We really had to grind out that victory. We did not play as well as we can, but we worked hard and in the end got our reward. I think we played better against MK the week before and lost,” said Moria.
This weekend, the Bison look to go 5-0 against the visiting Swindon Wildcats and then take a 3-1 lead in the series with Slough as they visit the Hangar.
Another four point weekend would do nicely for the side as they try to climb up the standings.
Contact the author Graham.Merry@Prohockeynews.com
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