THE Basingstoke Bison were denied a fourth consecutive victory by a goal scored in the final second at Peterborough last night.

Doug Sheppard's men beat the visiting Milton Keynes Lightning 3-1 at the Basingstoke Arena on Saturday night and went heartbreakingly close to making it a perfect weekend in Peterborough yesterday.

Aaron Connolly's second-period goal looked like the game winner, but the Peterborough Phantoms levelled through Darius Pliskauskas at 59:59 before going on to win on penalty shots.

Despite this setback, the Bison remain very much in contention at the top of the English Premier League, sitting third, just one point behind joint leaders Milton Keynes and Peterborough.

Two more summit clashes await the Herd this weekend. The fourth-placed Guildford Flames make the short trip to Basingstoke on Friday night, with the Bison travelling to Buckinghamshire to take on Milton Keynes the following day.

Basingstoke went into the weekend without both forward Grant Rounding and defenceman Declan Balmer due to injury.

They got off to a bad start against the Lightning, with the visitors taking the lead after just 3:42, James Griffin finding the net after good work from Markku Tahtinen.

Stuart Mogg levelled the scores at 13:16, with Ciaran Long getting the assist, and the Bison went ahead just before the first buzzer.

Despite Long being in the sin-bin, having picked up a delay of game penalty, Kurt Reynolds set up Joe Rand to put the hosts ahead at 19:27.

An exciting second period went by without any further scoring, but Reynolds turned scorer to give the hosts a bit of breathing space at 53:26, firing home from Shaun Thompson and Tomas Karpov.

The Lightning were unable to respond in the remaining six minutes and Basingstoke held on to claim an important 3-1 win.

The Bison were so close to completing a perfect weekend by winning in Peterborough last night, only to be denied right at the death.

The Herd, who were out-shot 50-26 over the course of the game, picked up 14 minutes in penalties during the first 25 minutes, but took the lead on a rare powerplay of their own.

With Bradley Moore in the bin for slashing, the visitors took full advantage, Connolly finding the net to end a goalmouth scramble at 29:33, with Thompson getting the assist.

The Bison came under increasing pressure as the match wore on, but netminder Tomas Hiadlovsky was able to repel every shot that came his way until the final second, when Pliskauskas found the net from Ales Padelek to end the visitors' stubborn resistance.

Neither side was able to find the net in overtime, so the game was decided on penalty shots.

Karpov went first for the Bison and while his effort was saved, Milan Barenyk was also unable to score for Peterborough.

Rand was also denied by Phantoms netminder Janis Auzins, but Pliskauskas again proved to be a thorn in the Herd's side, beating Hiadlovsky to leave Long needing to score.

Again Auzins made the save, meaning the Phantoms won the shoot-out 1-0 and the game 2-1.