Bisons take on the best

Times Editor

 

Despite facing the defending national champions and a team that lost only four regular season games, the UFA Bisons are confident going into the second round of the AMHL Playoffs.

The local triple-A midget team knows that they will have their hands full with the Red Deer Chiefs, who finished the regular season with a whopping 23-4-7 record.

Despite the odds stacked against them on paper, there is a reason all the games are played on the ice and not decided by impressive regular season stats.

“Red Deer is the defending national championship team, they’re in that position for a reason and we know that we’re going to have to be perfect (against them),” said Bisons bench boss Jeremy Friesen. “There is no such a thing as almost perfect. We’re going to have to be damn perfect in every area. We’ve also talked a lot about how our teams has been through and battled and faced a ton of adversity and we’re going against a team that hasn’t gone through that. 

“If we can go in there, we’ve been a successful road team since Richie (Richard Palmer) joined us, if we can go in there and steal one early and then come home and keep up with that momentum, that’s the kind of adversity that is pretty hard for a team like that to go through all of a sudden.

“That’s going to be our intention, to go in there and play really well and be proud of the way we play and hopefully come away with the win and go from there, take it game by game.”

The Chiefs, who won 23 of 34 league games, have a balanced scoring attack that registered 133 goals for (fifth best in the league), while allowing a league best 55 goals against. By comparison, the Bisons scored 122 goals for and allowed 115 against.

Although the Bisons have the video from the two games played against the Chiefs, the coaching staff isn’t planning on breaking down the evidence leading up to the playoff series. The Bisons lost 7-1 in Red Deer on Oct. 26, before being stomped 7-2 at home on Nov. 23.

“We’re not going to talk at all about those two games,” said Friesen. “They were early on in the season … when you look at our team, it is entirely different now. We’ve got a couple of new members and we’ve got some guys in different roles.

“We learned a lot of lessons about those games, especially the second one at home when we went up 2-0. 

“All year we talked about structure and sometimes we’ve bent but didn’t necessarily break. We know against them, we probably can’t even afford to bend.

“We’re going in as an underdog. All the pressure is on those guys. We can go in there, relax and play our game.”

After falling 6-1 in Game 1 on Feb. 26, the Bisons will look to even the series March 1 (8 p.m.) at the Strathmore Family Centre. Game 3 is slated for March 3 (3 p.m.) in Red Deer and Game 4, if necessary, will take place in Strathmore on March 6 (7 p.m.). Game 5, if necessary, will take place March 8 (8 p.m.) in Red Deer.