Bison impress with victory

THE Basingstoke Bison continued their recent winning run with an impressive victory over visiting Cardiff Devils, which saw the sides swap places in the Elite League.

In an entertaining, hard-hitting game on Saturday, the visitors - who were sitting seventh in the league - came out of the blocks on fire and Bison netminder Curtis Cruickshank had to be at the top of his game to keep them out.

It was no real surprise that they took the lead on 6:20, as Nathan Rempel scored after being fed from the boards by Mark Richardson.

The opening goal was on the powerplay, and the Devils had two further opportunities to add to their tally with the man advantage, as referee Matt Thompson started to annoy the home fans.

But the Bison defence held firm and then the biggest cheer of the opening session came as the home side were awarded a powerplay and made full use of it to secure an equaliser on 15:19.

The Herd's top goal-scorer, Brad Cruikshank, jammed the puck home past the post from man-of-the-match Doug Sheppard's rebound.

Both sides came close to adding to their tally before the buzzer, but the score remained 1-1.

The second session saw the home side edge in front, again on the powerplay, after the Devils' Mike Smith was penalised for playing on without his helmet.

In what was the best goal of the game, Greg Chambers swept the puck across the ice to Mark DeSantis, and his pin-point pass to the back post was buried by Sheppard, giving the visitors' netminder, Phil Osaer, no chance to react.

Cardiff hit back a minute later, as Dave Ianazzo was given space down the right wing to fire home at 25:12.

The Bison then lost Canadian defenceman Ryan O'Keefe after he went for a centre-ice hit on Mark Richardson but caught the Cardiff player with his knee and had to be helped off in the 29th minute.

The chances were coming thick and fast, with Greg Owen just failing to scoop home a Kevin Bergin cross for the Bison and Richardson failing to convert a good opportunity set up by Brad Voth.

With the departure of O'Keefe, forward Bergin moved into the Bison defence and did not look out of place.

This meant returning Bison British player Richie Hargreaves, who left Swindon earlier in the week, saw additional ice time and also looked solid.

In the Bison net, Cruickshank continued to deal with all that Cardiff threw at him, and produced a good pad save to deny Rempel.

As the period entered the final minute, the Herd crashed the net looking for a rebound, and in the process Bison forward Cruikshank was cross-checked in the back by Teplitsky, which sent him crashing on top of the visitors' netminder.

Teplitsky punched the Bison man before pulling him off the goalie, and then Cruikshank decided to use his fists as payback.

Both players received five-minute penalties for fighting and Cruikshank an additional slashing penalty to give the Devils an early powerplay in the final session.

The Bison killed that off and then scored on their own man advantage, with Bergin producing a sweet strike from the blue line to make it 3-2 at 41:56.

Seconds later, Devils' Lucas Komarek chopped the stick of the Bison's Hargreaves out of his hand and was sent to the sin-bin for slashing.

Once again, the Bison powerplay swung into action as Chambers fed Sheppard from behind the net and he did the rest at 43:04.

At this point, Cardiff coach Ed Patterson called a time-out to try to get his side back in the contest, but the Bison were in no mood to surrender their lead and kept them at bay until the final three minutes.

Then at 57:55, Cardiff's man-of-the-match Gerad Adams scored to make the score 4-3.

This set up a grandstand finish. With 71 seconds left, the Cardiff goalie was pulled for an extra attacker and, soon after, Blair Manning just missed the empty net.

As the clock ticked down to 18.4 seconds, Devils captain Dion Darling cleverly appealed to the referee that a few seconds had been allowed to come off the clock. The referee dismissed this, but the time the appeal took gave the Devils' top players a chance to have a rest for one last attempt at getting an equaliser.

Bison's Bergin won the final face-off of the game against Mark Smith and the Herd players jammed the puck up against the boards to run the final seconds down.

However, that was not the end of the action, as frustrations boiled on the boards at the buzzer. Cardiff's Voth clashed with the Bison's DeSantis, and, within seconds, the Herd cavalry arrived in the form of netminder Cruickshank and forward Cruikshank, as other Devils' players also got involved.

That left referee Thompson to add a score of penalties at the end of the game, with Voth receiving two minutes for roughing, while DeSantis and Cruickshank got two minutes each and Cruikshank got 2+2+game for leaving the bench.

Celebrating his team's third home win on the trot, player/coach Sheppard said: "We came out a bit flat at the beginning and Curtis Cruickshank made the big saves, but once we got going we matched them for the rest of the game.

"Ryan O'Keefe's injury does not look too bad and Bergy Kevin Bergin did well back in defence for us."

Sheppard added: "It was important for us to win as it was our only game of the weekend and this will keep us going in the right direction in the standings."

Scoring: Bison: Sheppard 2+1, Bergin, Cruikshank 1+0, Chambers 0+3, Owen, Manning, DeSantis 0+1; Devils: Rempel 1+1, Adams, Ianazzo 1+0, L Richardson, M Richardson, Teplitsky, Cowley 0+1. Shots on Goal: Cruickshank 37, Osaer 26. Penalties: Bison 57min, Devils 27.