The Bisons played like they had something to prove in the battle of division leaders.
The Carstar Okotoks Bisons scored three first period goals en route to a 4-0 win over the Sylvan Lake Wranglers to snap the visitors’ 17-game winning streak backstopped by rookie goalie Connor White’s first Heritage Junior Hockey League shutout Friday at the Murray Arena.
“When your team is playing that well in front of you it makes it easy to play behind them and just a lot of fun,” said White, an 18-year-old from Strathmore. “It’s huge and more than anything it’s a good statement by the team that you’re not going to come in and play us and drop five, six on us every night.
“It shows we can lock down when we need to against whoever.”
Sylvan Lake, which had not lost since late-September, took the earlier meeting between the clubs by a 6-0 score.
Okotoks improved to 18-3-1, tops in the Southern Division, and extended its points streak to 10 games.
“By far that was our best 60-minute effort of the year,” said Bisons alternate captain Caden Scott. “I thought our D were really going, our forwards were getting to our spots and you can’t ask for much more.
“We just owed them one, they beat us pretty bad in their barn about a month and a half ago and we had this one circled and we came out and gave a great effort.”
Okotoks got to work early.
Brandon Jarman opened the scoring just 29 seconds into the contest taking a feed from linemate Jady Shigehiro in front of goal and converting in tight.
Zephyr Laplante doubled the lead on the powerplay, jumping on a loose puck in a scramble near the blue paint and chipping the puck over outstretched Wranglers netminder Kaden Toussaint.
Seamus Garagan, who was all over the puck on Friday, made it a three goal lead late in the opening frame with a wrist shot off a turnover.
“If you get a jump on a team early it gives you a better opportunity to play your style and lock down,” Scott added. “We had to kill some penalties, our penalty kill has been improving a lot.”
The shorthanded unit had a lot of reps on Friday with six powerplays for the visitors, including a full two minute 5-on-3 kill that stretched from the late second to early third period.
“It was just playing our structure,” Scott said. “I don’t think we got too overly aggressive, we just let them stand there and Whitey made some massive saves.”
Scott rounded out the scoring with an extra effort against two Wranglers defenders late in the second period.
“The key was the team defence,” said Bisons head coach Brad Cobb. “We just did our jobs and everybody supported one another on the ice.
“We’re finally starting to get to playing together and playing the system we want to play and that’s the first game we did 60 minutes like that.”
White, who boasts a 9-1-1 record and 2.00 goals against average in 11 games with the herd, tipped his cap to the defensive work in front of him.
“We were all playing for eachother tonight,” White said. “And that reflects with the score, so I appreciate all of them.
“This is one of the most fun teams I’ve ever played for. It doesn’t hurt that we win lots and it’s just an overall great group of guys and great coaching.”
Coach Cobb said it’s a different Bisons team, one featuring 13 new players in 2024-25, than the one that took on a veteran-laden Sylvan Lake team in October.
The teams won’t meet again unless the playoffs feature a third straight championship series pitting the two combatants.
“We wanted to show ourselves that it’s still our trophy to lose,” Cobb said. “The we’re the number one team over there (in Sylvan Lake), now we’re the number one team over here.
“It would be a heck of a series if we ever meet at the end.”
Okotoks returns to divisional action Saturday night with a stop in Cochrane to tackle the Generals, the fourth-seed in the Southern Division.
The Bisons conclude the pre-holiday schedule the following with a Dec. 13 home date with the Coaldale Copperheads and an afternoon affair in Medicine Hat versus the Cubs on Dec. 14.
For more information, go to okotoksbisons.com.
