Well if you like your goals and were in Basingstoke tonight then you had a great time. Well maybe not if you were a Basingstoke fan! As I sat on the dentists chair the Giants were doing their thing against the leagues worst team by racking up eight goals in a match that seen the red light come on thirteen times in all. Andrew Martin scored two goals and had three points for a big five point night while Paul Deniset had a goal and three assists for four points.

Basingstoke clearly showed why they are the leagues worst team and the Giants showed what they can do when things come together for them in front of goal. Shane Johnson had a short handed goal and they scored two on the power play out of five chances. Evan Cheverie who grabbed a loan goal in the contest managed to pick up the man-of-the-match award.

They also did it without Rushton, Robins, Sample and Thornton, making it even more impressive.

Amazingly though, if ih-update is to believed, the Giants had just 18 shots in the game compared to the Bison’s 56. It claims the Giants had just two in the first period, one of which was a goal. I somehow find it hard to believe but it jumped out at me when I pulled up the page for a look at how the team got on after I got home from the dentists.

The win puts the Giants in third behind Sheffield and Coventry. They have now played the same number of games as Sheffield but lie a massive eleven points behind. You could say the league is over and it is time to put all their focus into the playoffs.

The Giants defence was the only letdown of the night. They couldn’t keep Basingstoke off the scoreline and not for such a potent defence they might well have lost the contest. The Giants took a two goal lead early in the second period but the Bison pulled one back and from that moment on, every time the Giants scored the Bison brought it back to a one-goal-game. Not until the Giants grabbed two late goals were they finally able to breathe easy knowing they were taking the two points back to Belfast.

The Bison also went 3-for-6 with the man advantage raising questions about the Giants penalty kill — outside the Johnson short-handed effort of course.

I know I haven’t updated the site in a while but I plan on rectifying that in the next couple of days and bringing everything up-to-date.

On the subject: Andrew Martin, Basingstoke Bison, Paul Deniset | ALL SUBJECTS |

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