Column: For Bison, grueling schedule offers a proving ground
BLOOMINGTON — The Bloomington Bison will travel some 280 miles to play their 10th game on Friday night, when they'll face the Cincinnati Cyclones.
The team will turn around and hit the road to play the Cyclones again on Saturday night at Grossinger Motors Arena. Less than 24 hours later, the Bison will host the Iowa Heartlanders for another game at 3 p.m. Sunday.
This will be the Bison's first of 10 grueling sets of three games in three days this season. This gauntlet of back-to-back-to-back matches will serve as a real stress test for the Bison as they complete only their first month in the ECHL.
With a record of 3-5-1, the Bison sit fifth in the seven-team Central Division and 11th in the Western Conference. As we arrive at this first waypoint of the year, I think it would be good to look at some of the trends that are starting to emerge from a team that may have not found its identity just yet.
The backup plan
The first thing that jumps out to anyone who dives into the Bison's stats is goaltending — specifically, the stark contrast between the spectacular play of starting goaltender Mark Sinclair and the struggles of the two other goalies who have suited up for the team so far. This dynamic has now been further complicated by the loss of Sinclair, who was called up Thursday to the Chicago Wolves in the American Hockey League.
Sinclair, 28, was near the top of the ECHL in both save percentage (.948) and goals against average (1.46). At the same time, goaltender Hugo Ollas, the 22-year-old New York Rangers prospect drafted in 2020, has posted a .478 GAA with a .818 save percentage and was pulled in favor of Sinclair in two of his last three starts.
Carolina Hurricanes prospect Ruslan Khazheyev played in one Bison game this year, giving up three goals on 15 shots and only surviving 27 minutes before Sinclair came in relief for him as well.
Head coach Phillip Barski finds himself in a difficult situation in net. Now that Sinclair has been promoted, there is no real timetable on if or when he may return. To fill the gap, the Bison have signed 26-year-old goalie Cole Ceci, who most recently played for the Evansville Thunderbolts in the SPHL. Ceci recorded a 2.93 GAA and .927 save percentage in seven games this season.
Ollas, as a Ranger prospect, needs development time and it looks like he is about to get a healthy dose of it. He will need to step up in Sinclair's absence as Barski will look to more evenly split ice time between him and the newcomer Ceci.
Speaking during the Bison's most recent "Coach's Show" at Maguire's Bar and Grill on Tuesday, Barski stressed the need for patience with his goaltending depth even as he knows he has to keep his team in a position to win.
"So you want to give them enough room to ... show what they can do," he said. "And then, you know, if it's not going well — and it's not just Ollas, it's any of our goaltenders — you know that you want to get them out of there."
There is cause for some optimism with Ollas, though. He had a solid outing in Wheeling until the last minute of the game when he gave up two goals in quick succession, earning the 2-1 loss. He has also shown promise at the NCAA level with Merrimack College. He spent the last three seasons there averaging a .914 save percentage across 60 starts, so some progress this season is not only likely but is expected. We should see him start at least a couple games this weekend.
Power outage
In 32 power play opportunities this season, the Bison have only cashed in four times. That 12.5% conversion rate with the man advantage ranks them 24th in the ECHL. Half of those goals have come from defenseman Case McCarthy and the other two by forwards Sanhil Panwar and Gavin Gould, with Panwar and Gould's goals coming just in the last two games.
Coach Barski did not mince words when it came to playing with the man advantage. "The power play sucks," he said, responding to a fan's question. "And full disclosure, I'm responsible for the power play. So, you know, I can say that."
Barski says he wants his team to average at least one power-play goal a game, which in his estimation should shake out to a 25%-30% success rate throughout a season.
While Barski did not think the team was out of the woods yet just because players scored twice on the power play over the weekend, he was hopeful. "I still think ... if we were doing all the right things and everything was going perfect, and the power play wasn't scoring, then all of a sudden we'd be like, you know, 'Man, we got real problems.'
"But when you really drill down into it, and you see that there's what I would refer to as low-hanging fruit, like so many opportunities for it to get better, then you feel pretty confident, and you feel pretty optimistic about where the power play is trending."
Help is on the way
Some eagle-eyed fans may have noticed Thomas Stewart playing forward in the last home game, a 3-1 win against Kalamazoo.
Stewart, whose natural position is defense, was moved to forward out of necessity. With injuries to forwards Colton Kalezic, Jackson Leppard, Maxim Barbashev and Johnny Evans, Barski was forced to get creative.
The move paid off as Stewart used his speed to beat out an icing call late in the third period, helping to set up Blake McLaughlin's empty-net goal that sealed the victory.
Stewart's days at forward, though, may not be long-lived. Barski said three of the four missing forwards could see time this weekend. For the Bison, a healthy Johnny Evans could be a real boost. A four-year ECHL veteran with the South Carolina Stingrays, Evans scored 18 goals in 53 games last season, and Barski identified him as a player who could break out this season.
Kalezic, who has not played a game yet, is coming off an 11-point campaign last year with the Cyclones. Leppard, who has been out of the lineup since Oct. 26, has scored once this year and played 57 games last season with South Carolina, scoring 10 goals.
For a team that has already iced 18 rookies, getting back three veterans with over 350 games of ECHL experience could not come at a better time. With 16 games, 11 of which will be part of a back-to-back series, in the 34 days before a Christmas break, it will take an all-hands-on-deck approach to scratch out a successful first half of the season.
If the Bison are looking for an opportunity to come together, go on a run, and establish themselves as a legitimate threat in the central division, the next few weeks will be the proving ground.
