Basingstoke Bison 4 Newcastle Vipers 1

IT WAS third time lucky for the Basingstoke Bison as they chalked up their first league win of the season on Sunday night with a 4-1 victory over the Newcastle Vipers.

The home side were forced to reshuffle their line-up as AJ Kelham was ruled out with a groin injury. This meant Swedish bench coach Peter Nyman returned to the ice and Neil Liddiard moved to the forward line.

In a dull first period, the visitors opened the scoring at 14:16 as Joel Irwin scored from close range.

After the break, the Bison came out fired up and equalised at 23:49 when Chris Crombie in centre-ice back-handed to Mike Ellis, who skated off down the right wing before passing back inside for Crombie to roof the puck.

Just 21 seconds later, Ben Cotnoir was sent to the sin-bin. But as he sat there, man-of-the-match Peter Campbell burst out of his own end-zone, leaving the Vipers in his skate tracks before beating Pasi Raitanen.

The third period continued with an end-to-end hockey until Newcastle ran into penalty trouble when Ian Defy was joined in the sin-bin by Mikko Koivunoro.

The Wella-backed team made full use of the two-man advantage as Nyman found Cotnoir and his shot to the back post found Nick Cross to slot home at 54:03.

The game was over as a contest one minute later when Matt Cote scored his first goal of the season, stepping in from the blue line to fire home - finishing an excellent shift by Marc Levers, Paul Berrington and Nick Cross.

Scoring; Bison: Cross 1+1, Cote, Campbell, Crombie 1+0, Cotnoir, Nyman, Lavoie, Ellis 0+1; Vipers: Irwin 1+0, Koivunoro, Lankshear 0+1. Shots on Goal: Hay 39, Raitanen 36. Penalties Bison 20mins, Vipers 16.