The Bison men's hockey team began the start of the second half of the 2015-16 conference season with a historic home sweep of the #3 Alberta Golden Bears on January 8-9 weekend at now want to continue the winning ways as they host the Mount Royal Cougars at the Wayne Fleming Arena during the January 15-16 weekend. Puck drop versus the Cougars will be 7 p.m. CT on Friday and 1 p.m. CT on Saturday.
This is another important series as Manitoba battling for a high playoff spot as they now sit in fourth spot in the Canada West standings entering the weekend with a 9-7-2 record for 16 points and only four points out of third spot held by Mount Royal (11-5-2). The Bisons have won four consecutive conference games.
This is the second weekend series between the two teams this season as they played earlier in October at Mount Royal and they Bisons lost both games (L 6-1 on Oct. 16/15 and L 3-1 on Oct. 17/15).
Manitoba had a historic weekend sweep of Alberta on January 8-9. A couple of highlights as Manitoba now took the season series in 2015-16 from the Bears by winning three of four conference games and this was the first time for Manitoba to accomplish that feat since 1929-30 season plus it also marks the first time since 1964-65 that the Golden Bears did not win a game at Manitoba during the Canada West hockey season.
Manitoba and Mount Royal have five players in the Canada West Top 10 scoring. For the Bisons, captain and third year forward Jordan DePape is first with 30 points (11 goals, 19 assists) while third year forward Shaq Merasty (12g, 9a) is fourth at 21 points while first year forward Brett Stovin (9g, 10a) is tied for eighth with 19 points. For the Cougars, Tyler Fiddler (9g, 18a) is in second spot with 27 points while Cam Maclise (8g, 10a) is tied for tenth at 18 points.
DePape and Stovin enter the weekend on a 13 and 11 conference game point streak.
In the nets, Bison second year netminder Byron Spriggs has played in ten conference regular season games and in eighth place in Goals Against Average with 3.21 and sixth in Save Percentage at .905 and Bison rookie goalie Justin Paulic is ninth at 3.33 GAA and third with .914 Save Pct.
