You can’t control luck, but elite goaltending and special teams go a long way. The Okotoks Jr. B Bisons used a 39-save performance from Devin Reagan and opportunistic offence to edge the Cochrane Generals 2-1 in overtime in the first meeting of the season between the traditional HJHL foes Thursday night at the Murray Arena. “We had a poor effort, I think we needed to have a much better game,” said Bisons forward and leading scorer Austin O’Bray. “Reagan stood on his head for us there and it felt really good to get him that W.” Facing a barrage of General attackers for most of regulation, Reagan was particularly busy in the final frame. The 6-foot-3 netminder put up the wall on shorthanded breakaway opportunities from Harry Osler and Brandon Aab and looked to be destined for his fourth shutout of the campaign. Sam Norris broke the bid with just 2:34 left before the final buzzer on a short side snipe, sending the Bisons to overtime with one thing on their collective mind. “Devin definitely bailed us out tonight,” said Bisons forward Jagger Thiessen. “We battled hard all the way through, but Dev saved our bacon, that’s for sure. “We all wanted to make it up to him for saving us all game. He did an excellent job.” O’Bray, the team’s leading scorer with 12 goals, ensured Reagan didn’t leave the game empty handed in the extra-session. After strong work along the boards from Dallas Otto, the 2000-born centre turned on the jets, blew by the Gens defender and found a hole past Knute Loe for the game-winner 3:46 into overtime. “I just wanted to get it down to the other end of the ice,” O’Bray said. “I just happened to be in and around them. I looked up and noticed (the Generals defender) was moving kind of slower so I thought I’ll cut around him quick and see if it will work. “It happened to work out.” The Generals had seven opportunities on the powerplay in regulation, yet found nothing on the man-advantage. In fact, some of the Bisons best chances on offence were not at even-strength. “Our PK was going pretty good tonight,” Thiessen said. “We got some good opportunities, the d-men did a good job of dumping it out and getting some odd-man rushes for us forwards.” The forwards carried the mail for Okotoks’ effort to finally break the goalless deadlock. While shorthanded, Nicolas Lush blocked a shot at the blueline, pumped the legs down the ice and fed Thiessen for a tap-in on a 2-on-1 break in the middle stanza. “He made an awesome pass,” Thiessen said. “I managed it to squeak it by.” The Bisons closed out the weekend by trouncing the Three Hills Thrashers by a 12-1 count on the road on Saturday. Eleven Okotoks skaters had multi-point performances led by two-goal, three point evenings from Connor Taylor and Jason Horn and a one-goal, thee assist showing from Brandt Black. Nicholas Ewanchuk had 26 saves in goal for his third win of the campaign. Okotoks gets back on the ice this weekend for its first ever road game versus the Lomond Lakers on Nov. 16 at the team’s temporary home in Claresholm. The weekend concludes for a Nov. 18 matinee at the Murray when the Northern Division’s Ponoka Stampeders hit big Rock Country. Puck-drop is 1:15 p.m. For more information go to okotoksbisons.com
