Bison men's hockey blog #2 - week 2, 3 of 2016-17 conference season
After dropping to 0-2 on home ice to start off the 2016-17 Canada West campaign, the Bison men's hockey team headed into Regina for a weekend set hoping to get things back on track. With 2 defensemen not making the trip with the team (Lee Christensen still suffering from a lower body injury, and Adam Henry with the flu), our team needed to dig deep and find a way to get two wins and bring our record back to .500.

The Friday night game didn't start off the way we wanted it to as Regina scored first and relatively early, but the Bisons stuck with it as the game wore on and our offensive skill took over in the third period. It was the line of Justin Augert, Remi Laurencelle, and Shaq Merasty that led the way in this one, scoring three times in the hockey game which eventually ended up in a 5-1 victory for the Herd.

Saturday afternoon, the team was hit with another setback, as defenseman Channing Bresciani was unavailable for the game due to an upper body injury. Brett Stovin, a natural centre, was asked to jump back on defense for this game. Typically, being asked to play a different position can be quite a challenge, but not for Brett Stovin in this contest. He finished with 4 points in the game (1G, 3A) and the Bisons came away with a 6-3 win.

This was also a weekend of firsts for a couple of Bison players. Brad Bowles and Quinton Lisoway both scored their first career CIS goals over the weekend against Regina as the Bisons pulled their record back to 2-2 on the season.

Fast forward to week number 3 and we have the UBC Thunderbirds paying a visit to the University of Manitoba. The Thunderbirds got off to a rocky start to the season as they came into Manitoba with a record of 1-5. We knew they would be a hungry team Friday night and we prepared for that. It was a fast-paced start to the game, and it was Anthony Bardaro who struck first for UBC late in the first period. We knew we had to be better in the second period than we were in the first, and we came out and did just that with goals from Jordan DePape and Augert only a minute apart to start the period, as well as a goal from Adam Henry with seven seconds left in the period to take a 3-1 lead into the third. We never looked back from there and won the contest 3-2.

Saturday night, UBC came out with a little bit more energy than they had Friday evening and once again they scored the opening goal. Unfortunately, we were chasing the game from that point on and never really got ourselves back into it. With the goalie pulled in the last minute of the third period we had a fury of chances but nothing found the back of the net and we lost the second game of the weekend 3-2.

The Bisons now sit at 3-3-0 through six games of the regular season. We travel to Calgary for a weekend set of games against the Calgary Dinos this weekend (Nov. 4-5), followed by a pair of games against the Lethbridge Pronghorns at the Wayne Fleming Arena at the Max Bell Centre on November 11 and 12.