This weekend sees your GalxC Cooling Services Basingstoke Bison in Planet Ice National League action, against the Swindon Wildcats and Hull Seahawks.
Firstly, on Saturday night we welcome the Wildcats to the Silverdome Arena, face off will of course be 6.30pm.
Our visitors sit 5th in the league standings, having accrued 49 points from 41 games, courtesy of 24 wins in regulation and an OT loss.
This sees them 5 points behind Sheffield Steeldogs and 7 points ahead of Raiders IHC, although both these teams have only played 2 fewer games.
Leading the scoring for Swindon is their Polish import forward, Tomasz Malasinski, who has the highly impressive record of 89 points (40+49) from 41 appearances, giving him an average of 2.17 points per game.
Player/Coach Aaron Nell is the next best with 68 points (31+37) also from 41 appearances, averaging 1.66.
Colby Tower, a former Nipissing Uni line mate of the Bison’s Gaël Lubwele, has 51 points (23+28) from 40 games, Gaël currently holds the bragging rights over his friend, with 62 points (28+34).
Fixtures between the two teams are always physical affairs and generally produce a plentiful supply of goals, no doubt Saturday night will see a continuation of this trend.
On Sunday the Herd make the lengthy trip to Humberside, where they will take on 11th placed Hull Seahawks for the final time this season, face off in the Hull Ice Arena is 5.30 pm.
As mentioned in other Seahawks previews, the season has been difficult in many ways for club as a whole, but in particular for their Owner/Head Coach and now former player Matty Davies.
So it’s a big hats off to him and everyone connected to the club for their efforts each week in what is a highly competitive league.
As we’ve seen on a number of occasions, Hull are more than capable of producing performances which belie their position, back in December they beat the Phantoms 7-2, and more recently picked up an excellent victory over the Steeldogs, in Sheffield.
10 of their losses have been by the margin of 1 or 2 goals, on another day these games could have gone Hull’s way and given the season a completely different outlook.
As for the Bison, they come into these games on the back of consecutive 4 point weekends, last Saturday saw the team secure 2 vital points in a thrilling 5-3 home win against Bristol Pitbulls, before putting the icing on the cake the following night with an exhilarating display in MK, which resulted in a throughly deserved 7-5 victory, the highlight being a superb 4 goal performance from MoM Gaël Lubwele.
So, fans of the Stampede, there you have it, 4 wins on the bounce, 25 goals scored and a confident group of players producing exciting free flowing hockey……what more do you need to make sure you’re in attendance on Saturday?
Don’t forget………………Loud, Louder, Loudest.
#wearefamily
#doitfordoughts
Tickets are available to purchase for Saturday’s encounter with the Wildcats from the following link: https://iceaccount.co.uk/basingstoke-bison?Reference=Bison-Website#
