Column: Midway through inaugural season, Bison roster's identity begins to emerge

BLOOMINGTON — When they take the ice in Darth Vader-themed jerseys on Saturday night, the Bloomington Bison will be playing their 34th game, near the halfway point of the 72-game regular season.

The team sits in a precarious position in the standings, hovering around the .500 mark and just a few points outside the last playoff spot in the central division.

Imagine someone came up to you this time last year and said, “Hey, would you be happy that Bloomington’s professional hockey team is on the bubble of reaching the playoffs in its first season?” You’d probably take it.

Well, actually, you’d be very confused, since the team didn’t exist at this time last year.

Halfway through the inaugural season, the identity of the roster assembled by head coach and general manager Phillip Barski has started to reveal itself.

Yet another change to that roster came this week when Barski traded Chase Pauls and Jackson Leppard to the Rapid City Rush, bringing in forward Patrick Bajkov and defenseman Zack Hoffman in exchange.

“When we were able to package those two guys up and bring those kind of guys into our locker room, we really felt excited about it,” Barski said, though he noted it was hard to part ways with Pauls and Leppard.

Bajkov scored a goal on Wednesday in his first game with the Bison. Still, Barski said the new right winger’s full value couldn’t be seen in his stats: “I mean, his points aren't there. But when you look at his scoring chances, or what he creates … he's a very dynamic player.”

As for Hoffman, Barski said he was among the most-used players on the Rapid City team: “He’s just a real good defenseman.”

At 26 and 27 respectively, Hoffman and Bajkov are among the older members on their new team. Even factoring in their acquisition, the Bison remain the league’s second-youngest team with an average age of 24.41.

Naturally, youth also translates to comparative inexperience. Of the league’s 29 teams, only five rank lower than Bloomington for the total number of ECHL games recorded by all players (1,708 as of Thursday).

Lack of experience isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As the first coach of a first-season ECHL team, Barski is working to build a disciplined, process-driven culture from the ground up. Offering rookies their first exposure to the league allows him to shape their development accordingly.

Inconsistency, however, is often the hallmark of young teams, and the Bison are no exception.

Goaltending

Early in the season, the Bison relied on the stabilizing force of veteran Mark Sinclair in the net. The team’s schedule, with numerous back-to-back and three-in-a-row games, meant the young goalies on the roster would be tested often.

Goaltenders generally take longer than skaters to develop their skills and maintain consistent performance. For example, Hugo Ollas has shown flashes of dominance in the net for the Bison this year, but the 22-year-old struggled at times to maintain that level of play.

Ollas, now on assignment with the Worcester Railers, has been pulled from the game after three of his 12 starts of this season. He didn’t last past the 10-minute mark in two of those games, both against the Iowa Heartlanders.

But what if you threw out those three disastrous starts? You’d have a goaltender with a 92.1 save percentage across nine games. Time will tell which direction Ollas’ game will take.

For the last month, Hurricanes prospect Yaniv Perets has shown a steady hand for the Bison as he fills in for Sinclair and Ollas. Perets, 24, has a record of 3-2-1 in six games with a 2.49 goals against average and a .918 save percentage.

Scoring

As a team, the Bison have scored 77 goals for the year. That number put them fifth from the bottom of the league as of Thursday. Luckily for the Bison, three of the teams that rank below them — Indy, Kalamazoo and Cincinnati — are among their frequent opponents in the league’s central division.

The Bison’s lack of offensive prowess could be attributed to a roster decimated by injury early in the season. Long-term absences from forwards Danny Katic, Jonny Evans and Gavin Gould created holes in the lineup that proved difficult to fill.

That trio recorded a combined 98 points last season, but the players have only been clear to rejoin the Bison in the past two weeks. The reunion has yielded mostly positive results, including a season-high seven goal performance last Saturday in Kalamazoo.

Barski seems confident in the current composition of his team. After the Bison claimed a hard-earned point in an overtime loss Wednesday against division-leading Toledo, their coach expressed a positive outlook on the coming months.

“You know, to get guys back in the lineup, we were able to roll four lines,” Barski said. “All of a sudden it gives us some depth, and it gets some other guys some rest. You know, we can kind of push the pace.

“So hopefully our guys can stay healthy, and get a bit more stuck in the details and the structure; then we'll see how the second half of the season goes.”