Ice hockey Pitbulls’ early advantage blown away by Bison charge

THE Bristol Pitbulls saw a 4-0 lead evaporate as they eventually lost 4-7 to visiting Basingstoke Bison on Saturday night, writes Maddie

Marles.

The hosts were missing defenceman Ben Solder but welcomed new signing Bayley Harewood into the line-up as well as the Slough two-ways Christian Mohr, Jacob White-Sey and Luke Smital.

Period one saw the Pitbulls fly into a 4-0 lead. The match started off at a fast pace with Mason Lipsey dropping the gloves with Paul Petts in the opening two minutes after Petts had boarded Jay Warren. With three seconds left of the resulting powerplay Owen Sobchak skated from behind the Pitbulls goal and weaved his way through the Bison defence before sliding it past Alex Mettam. The Pitbulls’ second goal came from Morgan Clarke-Pizzo, scoring his third goal in as many games. With the Pitbulls showing their dominance they struck again three minutes later, this time through Luke Smital who tapped the puck into the empty goal with

Mettam left stranded in the corner and all despite being a skater down with Tamas Elias in the box for interference. It was a case of deja vu six minutes later when, with Mohr in the box for interference, Smital went from the centre line through the defence slotting home his second goal of the evening and the Pitbulls’ fourth.

Basingstoke came out fighting for the next period. Bison’s Canadian import Gael Lubwele scored their first whilst on the powerplay as Harewood was penalised for cross checking. Then after a lull, Bison scored two goals in two minutes with Lubwele getting his second and the other coming from Ollie Hemmings-Maher. In the sixth minute of the third period, Zack Milton scored for Basingstoke levelling the game at 4-4.

In a late flurry, Bison scored three more, all courtesy of Marcel Balaz, securing his hat-trick. Bison’s seventh goal came while the Pitbulls were icing without a netminder as Will Kerlin spent three minutes out of the net as the

Bristol side tried to force their way back into the game.

Afterwards, Pitbulls head coach Jamie Elson said: “At 4-0 they think it’s done, they think Basingstoke are just going to roll over and go home but I give them credit they came out hard. It’s a possessionbased game and we’re just giving up crazy goals where we have possession. I give Basingstoke credit they came hard and the guys were hungry and they didn’t ease up and ultimately they played 40 minutes and we only played 20.”