Doug's Diary (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Basingstoke Bison player/coach Doug Sheppard's weekly column

12:00pm Saturday 23rd February 2013 in Sport

NOTHING is going quite as we planned at the moment.

We’ve one of the lowest penalty points total of any team in the league, but we’ve lost a player in each of the last three games to a game penalty and we’ve narrowly lost all of them as a result.

Joe Greener is the latest addition to the injury list, so we faced Slough with an even shorter bench. Despite this we took an early lead, but then lost Joe Miller during the game.

Bringing the score back to 6-6 in regulation time was a great effort by the team. Joe Rand deservedly picked up his man of the match award with two goals and three assists.

I thought the first period against Milton Keynes was fairly even. Rand’s short-handed goal tilted the momentum in our favour but Milton Keynes took full advantage of his game penalty to score two power-play goals.

The locker room after the game on Sunday was the quietest of the season. It’s been some time since we lost at home and we knew that our losses would move us down to second place.

Do I think we can bounce back? Of course we can.

Nobody will be trying harder than our captain, Tony Redmond, who will be wearing the Bison shirt for the 600th time on Saturday night.

What better way to celebrate his loyalty and commitment to hockey in Basingstoke than to get back to winning ways.

Congratulations and thanks, Tony.

Doug