Bisons off to the post season

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The UFA Bisons finished the regular season on high note with a pair of 3-2 wins over the Red Deer Chiefs on Feb. 13 and the Calgary Flames on Feb. 15.
Head coach Dan MacDonald liked what he saw from his team and their ability to dictate the games.
“(The Chiefs) came hard at us in the first period and we weathered that storm and then we played good after that. We played everybody and (got) everyone ready for the playoffs,” said MacDonald. “We just upped our game ourselves and we won the game because of it.”
Cole Noble, Sebastien Kilcommons and Will Conley scored in the win against the Chiefs.
The game against the Flames proved to be one where there was a lack of capitalizing on chances.
“We could’ve scored lots of goals and just didn’t. We got to get back to work bearing down, so that we’re really ready (for playoffs),” said MacDonald. “It was a tough game for us, there’s nothing we can do, we couldn’t go any higher than third and they were trying to get into fourth and playing a different style game than we were.”
He really felt that the boys played two solid games on special teams, which is becoming a strength.
“Our power play is working really well right now and our penalty kill is really good too,” said MacDonald. “We don’t have many concerns when they have a power play, we can kill penalties pretty good.”
Conley, Markus Lavallee and Zachary Cox supplied the offence versus the Flames.
“The other positive is our goalies are playing well this time of year, our goals against since December has been very good.”
The Bisons will open up the post season against the same Flames team starting on Feb. 19 at Strathmore Family Centre at 7 p.m.
“We’ve got to play well, they’ve got some real good players and their goaltender is descent so we have to get lots of traffic in front of the net,” said MacDonald. “The big thing for us is we have to finish our checks.”
MacDonald admits if they are to be successful, they have to move the puck quickly up the ice and play at a high level.
“We’ve had it pretty easy the last two games in the sense that we played great but we weren’t at our best … (we have to) do the little things better,” said MacDonald.
Game 2 is set for Saturday, Feb. 21 (12:15 p.m.) at the Father David Bauer Arena in Calgary. Game 3, if necessary, will be the next day at the Strathmore Family Centre (2 p.m.).