Basingstoke Bison 7, Fife Flyers 2

AN AWESOME display in the first period in which the Basingstoke Bison scored five times without reply set up a comfortable victory over the visiting Fife Flyers on Sunday.

It took the home side just 88 seconds to find the back of the net, as man-of-the-match Doug Sheppard fired home a Duncan Dalmao rebound.

The first powerplay of the night saw the Bison extend their lead further as Steve Ellis passed back to Josef Lukac, enabling the Slovakian to score his league goal for the club with a blistering blue-line shot at 3:43.

With the Herd's offensive in full flow, Sheppard stole the puck away from Dreu Volk and skated in to score.

The home side then added another, short-handed. As Mike Ford sat in the box, captain Shawn Maltby took the puck off Greg Kuznik and then beat former Bison 'keeper Scott Hay one-on-one at 15:37.

The first period massacre was still not complete and, when Maltby fired just wide, Ford picked up the pieces and fed Sheppard who converted with a top-corner strike to complete a first session hat-trick.

After the break, the Flyers were reduced to just nine players with six forwards and three in defence in a bid to stop the flow of goals.

That proved to work, but not before Mike Ford had added another goal picking up the rebound from an Owen Walter shot.

The Bison forward line of Jeff Corey, Lewis Buckman and Shaun Thompson again caused plenty of problems, with Corey going close in the middle of the period.

Soon after, Mark Morrison latched onto a long pass out of defence, but Ronnie Vogel denied the Fife player.

The visitors did get on the scoreboard at 34:45 as John Haig netted at the far post, unmarked from Morrison.

The final incident of the period saw a monster hit on Buckman by Volk, which left the Bison player in a heap on the ice.

Bison general manager and head coach Mark Bernard aired his views on the matter and earned a two-minute bench penalty for his side which was killed off without a goal.

The final session saw the Flyers go back to using all their players, except for player/ coach Morrison who sat out most of the period.

The home side took just 14 seconds to add their final goal of the night as Maltby netted from close range.

It was left to Fife's man-of-the-match, Steven King, to score the final goal with nine minutes left on the clock.

Scoring; Bison: Sheppard 3+3, Maltby 2+2, Ford 1+2, Lukac 1+0, Galway 0+2, Dalmao, Walter, Ellis 0+1; Flyers: Haig 1+1, King 1+0, Horne, Morrison, Kuznik 0+1. Shots on Goal: Vogel 35, Hay 43. Penalties: Bison 10, Flyers 2.