THE Basingstoke Bison suffered a heartbreaking end to their best ever season in the English Premier League as they lost 5-4 to the Manchester Phoenix in their play-off semi-final after a sudden death shoot-out.

It was an unfortunate finish to a brilliant game which will go down in the club’s history books, as 65 minutes and six penalty shots failed to split the teams at Coventry on Saturday.

With the tension at fever pitch, Manchester’s James Archer scored for his side, piling even more pressure on Bison player/coach Doug Sheppard.

The Canadian, who had worked so hard to build the Bison’s best EPL team, was unable to convert his shot – which was a cruel way for his and the team’s season to end.

“It is horrible way to lose a match and, without doubt the worst moment in my career in Britain,” said a extremely disappointed Sheppard.

“In previous games against Manchester they have outplayed us and we had to rely on odd man rushes to get our chances. In this game we outplayed them.”

Sheppard added: “We had chances and should have been a couple of goals up at the end of the first period. They had the momentum in the second, but I felt we came back at them in the third.

“Then, in the shoot-out, we were 2-1 up, but just could not finish it off which is tough.”

During the season the Bison excelled against the Phoenix on the powerplay, but on Saturday they just could not find that killer touch despite twice having a two-man advantage.

Sheppard said: “Our special teams have done well against Manchester all season. We needed to capitalise on our two five-on-threes even if our powerplay unit was minus (Jaroslav) Cesky on the second one as he was in the bin.

“Credit to Manchester they did a good job on the penalty kill.”

Then, to add salt into the wound, Manchester scored a powerplay goal on a Sheppard penalty, which did not amuse the player/coach.

He said: “I would like to see that back, it was play-off hockey and I didn’t think it deserved a penalty.”

The heartbreaking loss ended a season which saw the Herd finish second in the league and lose in two semi-final shoot-outs.

Sheppard is now even more determined to end the Bison’s trophy drought and give their loyal and excellent fans something to shout about in what is the club’s 25th anniversary season.

Sheppard said: “I felt we had a good enough team to win some silverware this year, but we have just come up short.

“I will start right away building for next season as there is no time to waste. We want to be celebrating next season and we start preparing for that right now.”

Manchester went on to win the final, beating the Guildford Flames 5-2 in Coventry last night.

See The Monday Gazette, on sale now, for a full report from the Bison's agonising play-off semi-final defeat.