Patience remains the Okotoks Bisons’ most treasured virtue.
With time running out on their bid to jump into the top-spot in the South Division, the Bisons methodically picked their spots to dispatch the pesky Banff Bears 4-2 Friday on home-ice.
“You’ve got to stay focused and not let one slip past you that’s an easy one,” said Bisons forward Aiden Geiger. “When you outchance them like that you’ve just got to keep burying them, keep putting it on net and eventually it’s going to go in.”
The first period set the tone for a game of cat-and-mouse with the upstart Bears playing the role of counterpunchers to perfection.
After Okotoks’ Kyle ‘Johnny Hockey’ Becker opened the scoring eight minutes in, Banff’s Nathan Cohen-Wallis pulled off a sublime deke in close to beat Matthew McDonald and secure a 1-1 tie against the run of play.
Darren Bordt restored the advantage early in the second stanza when he caught Bears netminder Joel Lepper out of his crease on a shorthanded break.
Undaunted, the Bears countered again through Antonio Najera who went against the grain on McDonald to produce a 2-2 scoreline heading into the third act.
A potential goal from Bison Spencer Bender was waved off while blueliner Caleb Eefting rung one clean off the bar for the snake-bitten Bisons.
The persistence would eventually pay off again on the penalty kill.
Alternate captain Connor Tudor combined with Geiger for a give-and-go play which would hold up as the game winner with 11 minutes remaining.
“Tuds made a nice play in the neutral zone to get it free, I gave it back to him, he gave it back to me,” Geiger said. “I hadn’t had much luck all night and I just threw a little backhand off and it squeaked through.”
Okotoks leading scorer Mark McLeod finished off a three-point evening with an empty-netter to ice the result with six seconds remaining. Okotoks out-shot Banff 43-28.
“You think you’re going to get one, but they weren’t going in,” said Bison Harrison Smith. “I’m glad to see we kept up with the pace. We didn’t sit back.
“We weren’t getting frustrated that we weren’t scoring. We knew if we kept pressing we were going to get one.”
Okotoks finished the contest with a season high three goals shorthanded while killing off six of seven penalty-kill situations.
“They’re a bit more of a younger team so we wanted to get all over them,” Geiger said of the penalty-kill deployment. “They didn’t have a single penalty until the last two minutes so we played a lot of the night shorthanded and we had to go on the attack that way.”
Okotoks was buoyed by the return of defenceman Jaret Bordt on Friday after the first-year blueliner missed nearly a month with a knee injury. It’s a welcome addition to what’s been a patchwork defensive unit. Bordt chipped in with two assists in his return.
“He’s super solid back there. It’s a good feeling to know he’s back on the ice,” said Smith, a forward whose been filling in admirably on defence. “A guy like that really helps. He’s really defensive-minded and we need that with a pretty offensive potent team.”
Okotoks saw its five-game winning streak snapped on Sunday on the road as it fell to the defending North Division titleholders, the Blackfalds Wranglers, by a 5-3 count.
It’s going to take a meltdown by the South Division leading Cochrane Generals to relinquish the crown in the final weekend of action. The Gens lead Okotoks by four points with each team holding two games remaining. Coaldale sits two points back of Okotoks in third.
The Bisons wrap up the 2015-16 regular season with a pair of home dates this weekend. First, the Bears pay another Friday visit to the Murray Arena (8 p.m. puck-drop) then Okotoks welcomes the Strathmore Wheatland Kings for its season finale on Sunday (1:15 p.m.)
“I don’t think it’s nerve-wracking. This is what we play for,” Geiger said. “This is the most fun time of the year, everyone is now playing the hardest hockey that they can.”
Should Okotoks finish with one of the top-two seeds in the South they will earn a bye through the first-round of the post-season.
For more information on the Bisons go to okotoksbisons.com
