No. 9 Bison men’s hockey team travel to No. 4 Saskatchewan on Jan. 12-13 in battle for second place

Bisons ranked for first time in season and play on Friday at 7 p.m. CT and second game on Saturday at 7 p.m. with Manitoba looking to move up in the conference standings

The No. 9 Bison men's hockey team was just ranked for the first time this 2017-18 season in the latest U SPORTS Top 10 rankings and plays an important road weekend series in a battle for second place in the Canada West conference. The Bisons play at No. 4 Saskatchewan Huskies on January 12-13 with puck drop at 7 p.m. CT on Friday and 7 p.m. CT on Saturday.

The Bisons seek to continue their strong start to the New Year as they swept No. 1 Alberta at home to begin 2018 at home and now on a four game winning streak and earned a point in 11 of last 12 consecutive conference games heading into the weekend series. Manitoba is 4-2-2 on the road and won four of last six games away from Manitoba.

Heading into the two game weekend series, Manitoba sits in third spot in the Canada West standings entering the weekend with an 11-5-2 record for 24 points and only five points out of second held by Saskatchewan with a 14-3-1 record. The Top 4 will host a playoff round. Alberta is first with 31 points while Mount Royal, UBC and Lethbridge are tied for fourth at 17 points in the eight team conference.

This is the second weekend series between the two teams this conference season. Earlier in 2017-18, the Herd played at home on October 20-21, 2017 and won 4-3 in 1st overtime (Oct. 20) and lost 6-0 (Oct. 21).

Manitoba has four players in the Canada West Top 20 scoring. Third year forward (first year with Bisons) Michael St. Croix (seven goals, 15 assists) has 22 points in 18 games, good for a tie for third place. Third year defenceman and alternate captain Adam Henry (4g, 13a) is T-10th with 17 points while second year forward Kamerin Nault (10g, 6a) and third year forward (first year with Bisons) Zach Franco (5g, 11a) are tied for 13th spot with 16 points.

In the nets, Bison fourth year netminder Byron Spriggs has played in 16 conference regular season games and is seventh in the CW with 3.06 GAA and eighth in Save Pct. with .908 while tied for second with nine conference wins and first in CW minutes played at 942:17.

Bison Notes: Manitoba is third in Canada West in penalty kill (84.6%) and seventh in power play (17.1%). On the road, the Bisons are fourth in penalty kill (84.4%) and eighth in PP (8.3%).

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