THE Basingstoke Bison turned on a five-star performance as they beat the visiting Manchester Phoenix.

The Herd ended the night 5-2 winners, but it could have been a lot more if not for the heroics of Manchester’s netminder Stephen Fone.

The goalie was only beaten once in 15 shots in the opening session at 14:23, as Tomas Karpov and Ciaran Long combined for Vanya Antonov to score.

The second session was only 39 seconds old, when Long hit the bar with a back handed shot.

Once again the Herd dominated the 20 minutes with 19 shots and Rene Jarolin hit the post on a powerplay two minutes later.

Daniel Lackey was the next player to hit the post with the puck, before a sweet blue line strike from man of the match Declan Balmer found the back of the net at 33:02.

Two minutes later and the impressive Karpov scored the goal of the night, as he was found by a long pass from Jan Jarabek.

The Czech forward skated across the face of the goal and scored with a lovely backhand finish.

Soon after, Balmer and Manchester’s Greg Pick threw down their gloves to exchange punches, which earned both four minutes for roughing from referee Dave Cloutman who had a good night in charge.

The Bison made sure of the victory with two goals in the first five minutes of the final period.

Another nice pass up the ice from Jarabek once again found Karpov and this time he combined with Grant Rounding and Shaun Thompson, before he applied the finish.

Soon after, the Herd made it 5-0, as Lackey found Derek Roehl in the slot and he made no mistake.

With the game won the Bison eased back and it allowed the Phoenix to score twice.

Their first came from Gareth O’Flaherty after nice set-up play from Roman Malinik.

Then defenceman Joni Tuominen scored their other goal with a blue line blast.

The victory moved the Bison back into fourth place in both the league and cup standings and this evening they are in Ice Sheffield to face the Sheffield Steeldogs.