THE Basingstoke Bison reign back at the top of the English Premier League lasted just one day as they crashed to their biggest defeat of the season losing 8-2 at the Milton Keynes Lightning.

Unlike the night before against the Guildford Flames, the Herd were unable to comeback from shipping two early goals.

Lewis Hook scored the opening goal at 2:22 and then Marko Luomala doubled the advantage three minutes later.

The Bison had the puck in the net in the final minute of the first period, but it was disallowed due to a high stick.

The Lightning made sure of victory with four unanswered goals at the start of the second period, as Luomala, Jack Watkins, Bobby Chamberlain and Hook made it 6-0 by 31:20.

At this point the Bison swapped their netminders as Dan Weller-Evans made his league debut and took over from Tomas Hiadlovsky.

Two minutes later, Alex Symonds scored his first goal of the season assisted by Shaun Thompson and Aaron Connolly.

MK completed the second period scoring thanks to Blaz Emersic to make it 7-1.

The Herd scored the first goal after the interval as man-of-the-match Stuart Mogg scored shorthanded from Thompson after Joe Greener took a slashing penalty.

It was left to Emersic to finish off the scoring with MK’s eighth goal at 57:31.

The defeat saw the Herd slip to third in the standings and they will hope to bounce back to winning ways next weekend, when they face a tricky trip to Sheffield on Saturday night, followed by a home game against Swindon.