Bisons find offence

Posted on: Staff Writer

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The UFA Bisons were able to find their way out of an offensive slump in a big way in the back half of a two game set in the Edmonton area this past weekend.
The Herd lost 4-3 to the SSAC Athletic Club on Dec. 6, but trounced the Fort Saskatchewan Rangers 9-5 the following day.
Head coach Dan MacDonald was happy to see some offensive production from the team.
“We’ve been getting close and working very hard. We just pressed upon the players that they got to keep on moving forward and it’ll come,” said MacDonald. “(Sunday against the Rangers), it did finally, we’ve been snake bitten around the net, we work hard and get a lot of chances and just weren’t finishing and today we did.”
The all-around effort was consistent in the win over Fort Saskatchewan and it was just some mental lapses that allowed the Rangers to notch some goals.
“We played really well, at one time during the third period it was 9-2 for us, we kind of let up a little bit and they got three goals, but we commanded right from start to finish,” said MacDonald. “We moved the puck better and we kept going to the net better. So we did better things, again goal scorers have to keep going to the net and I thought we did that really well.”
The strength for the Bisons was that they were able to gain momentum off of the first goal and kept pushing.
“I think once we got a couple goals, we got on a roll, just for the fact we haven’t been scoring. So the whole momentum for our team changed,” said MacDonald.
Gary Haden led the way with three goals, Barrett Sheen had two, while Zachery Vinnell, Kyle Gordon and Austin Cameron added one each in the win.
In the Saturday game versus SSAC, it was just a matter of misfortunes, as they could not capitalize on chances.
“It was tied 3-3 in the third and last two minutes and again we were all over them and hit some cross bars, missed two breakaways that we didn’t score on. We end up losing the game, so it was unfortunate,” said MacDonald.
Sheen had two goals, while call-up Jayden Smith had one in the loss.
The Bisons will have a pair of home games this weekend, as they will host the Lloydminster Bobcats (5:15 p.m.) on Dec. 13 and the Grande Prairie Storm (2 p.m.) on Dec. 14.