Bisons give recognition

Times Editor

 

The UFA Bisons officially capped off the 2012-2013 season by hosting their annual awards banquet on April 11 at the Indus Recreational Centre.

With all five teams under the Foothills AAA Hockey Association umbrella, the Bisons celebrated the season along with the two triple-A bantam teams, the Airdrie Xtreme and the Okotoks Oilers, and the two M15 triple-A midget teams from Chestermere and Airdrie/Cochrane.

Despite a season of ups and downs, Bisons head coach Jeremy Friesen said the campaign was a success.

“I’m proud – it’s like being father-proud,” said Friesen. “When you look at everything we’ve had to go through as a group and the way that they battled, competed and stuck together … it was fantastic. It would have been quite easy for this team to get side-tracked and off the rails when you look at some of the stuff we had to deal with – some of it was public and some of it was not – (but) it’s really impressive and speaks volumes about our team maturity and commitment level.”

Friesen was particularly proud of his team for earning a home-playoff berth after a disastrous 3-7 start to the season, and for earning a win in the second round playoff series to Red Deer, who ended up winning the league title. According to Friesen, Red Deer never lost a single game in the second round in the past handful of seasons until the Bisons defeated them on home ice at the Strathmore Family Centre.

However, on this particular night, he was happy to honour his players at the annual awards dinner.

Forward Matt Forchuk was honoured as the Bison’s leading scorer, while Mackenzie Bauer was named the Rookie of the Year. Jake Dube was named the Best Defenseman and also the winner of the Ron Ebbesson Memorial Scholarship.

The coaching staff had a great debate on who should be named the Most Improved Player and eventually decided on co-winners, as both Kurt Fraser and Mark Nerland will have their names engraved on the trophy.

Mark McLeod was presented the Neil Glionna Award for Dedication, Perseverance & Sportsmanship, while the team named goaltender Richard Palmer the Most Valuable Player.

According to Friesen, all the award winners have two things in common, which is dedication and commitment to their team.

“They’re all very respectful, they’re leaders … they may not be the most vocal players, but they bought in to what we were trying to do as a team,” said the coach. “They never put themselves ahead of anybody else and they were really consistent, dedicated, good human beings all year long.

“That’s part of our mission statement as a coaching staff of what we wanted to do – we want to develop these guys on an off the ice and encourage them that mistakes are okay. It’s how you respond from them, learn from them and push past those things … every single one of our award winners did that more than once this year.”