Phantom Lauko returns to haunt Planet Ice

Bison 2 Peterborough Phantoms 5

27/12/11

Some bizarre decisions left the Bison crowd wondering whether Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Louis Braille could have done a worse job than the three officials. However, let not the outrageous and indeed malevolent incidents which I am about to relate mask the fact that Bison lost a game in which they looked lack lustre in contrast to their opponents who looked very much up for the game. Why? Was it too much Christmas pud, lack of preparation, too long a break since their last game or all of those three. Or was it something much more serious and deep rooted to do with the morale of the team and the will to win? Only Mo and those in his dressing room can answer that one.

During the course of the game two unsavoury incidents of the most unseemly type flared up. The result? Two Bison players, Chris Wiggins and Jacob Heron, were thrown out of the game. The first occurred in the 15^th minute when Wiggins crashed into an opponent sending him to the ice like a sack of King Edwards. One of his team mates tried to exact revenge on Wiggins but was restrained. Wiggins received a 5 + game. The Phantoms vigilante? Nothing at all. In the 31^st minute Bison’s Liam Chong was robustly boarded by Maris Ziedins. As he crumpled to the ice, Jacob Heron charged in and there developed an ignominious conflict with Ziedins as the former expressed his views concerning the latter’s conduct. Heron was given a 2 + game and Ziedins only a 2 boarding and nothing for roughing. The howling man on the end of Row E voiced his disapproval of both decisions in the most vociferous manner as did most of the crowd, albeit not as loudly. Perhaps the incidents looked different depending on where you were sitting, but from the seats above the red line, they looked more or less like a carbon copy of each other. How strange, therefore, that Bison ended up with two players thrown out of the game and the Phantoms merely a 2 minute boarding penalty to one player.

On 11 minutes the Phantoms opened the scoring. With Kurt Reynolds serving a 2 + 10 for “checking from behind” the visitors and made the extra skater count as Jeff Glowa centred to Maris Ziedens lurking at the back door. Bison netman, Stephen Wall, got a piece of the puck but couldn’t prevent Ziedens’s shot from crossing the line.

Bison’s best goal chance of the period occurred during the power play when Liam Chong nicked the puck as stealthily as one of Fagin’s pickpockets and burst clear. He bore down menacingly on goaltender King, but failed to bamboozle the Phantom’s netman with his deking and his shot was saved.

Bison found themselves 2 goals to the bad within 5 minutes of the restart. Maris Ziedens’s shot was saved by Wall, but the puck fell into the crease and was bundled in by Robbie Brown. A scrappy goal, but they all count. As Mr. Punch says, “That’s the way to do it”. Get someone in front of the net to scuff in those rebounds – something which Bison seem to do all too infrequently.

The mood of the Bison crowd became dark – like Dunkirk without the spirit. However, within a minute a ray of hope appeared from behind the black cloud of defeatism as Slovak cannon Marcel Petran chalked up an unassisted goal. He pounced on a slack clearance out of defense to rifle home a top shelf slap shot which deflected off the bar and in with that characteristic “PING!” sound. Surely this would signal a Bison revival. A goal was all they needed to raise their spirits and power on to level the scores and even go on to win, was it not? Alas such optimism proved to be folly of the greatest magnitude. It took only another couple of minutes for the air to be squeezed from the Bison balloon. An overhit and woefully inaccurate pass out of defense struck Viktor Kubenko’s skate and deflected straight to James Ferrara. It was a late Christmas present and the Phantoms forward was doubtless thinking “Thank you Santa” as he hammered home. 1-3 it was.

Worse (indeed far worse) was to come shortly afterwards. Returning as a Phantom, Bison old boy Ondrej Lauko, who most Bison fans were disappointed not to see back at Planet Ice this year, drove a dagger into the hearts of the Bison faithful. On 31 minutes, set up by the brothers Ferrara, he rifled in an unstoppable slap shot. You could tell by his exuberant celebration how sweet the moment was for him. It left us wondering whether there was more than met the eye about his departure from Basingstoke.

There was no more scoring until the 8^th minute of the final period. This time it was bouncing Czech, Daniel Volrab, with an unassisted goal to reduce the deficit to 2-4 and breathe some hope into the Bison cause. From an acute angle he found the gap between goaltender and near post. Once again, however, the Bison revival was short lived, as 3 minutes later Luke Ferrara joined his brother James on the score sheet. (Does this piece of paper actually exist?) Lauko’s centring pass found Luke at the back door to smash the rubber disc into Wall’s net – a very similar goal to their first of the game. Now at 2-5 behind and looking utterly deflated, Bison’s prospects of a revival looked as likely as Robbie Coltrane flying to the moon on the back of a pigeon. Neither occurred.

With the clock ticking down Ondrej Lauko broke clear of a statuesque Bison back line. It was touch and go as to whether he could get his shot away before the buzzer went. The man in the Charlestown Chiefs shirt and many others I am sure didn’t know whether to look at the play or the clock. Would Lauko try one feint too many and be beaten by the buzzer? Would he shoot from long range and score before the buzzer went? As it turned out Lauko’s shot thudded against StephenWall just as the buzzer sounded and it was all over. Another depressing evening for the Bison crowd.