An Assist to Ambler's Ass

Bison 4 Bracknell Bees 0

2/2/13

Muhammad Ali famously described his style as “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”. Well last night at Planet Ice the Bracknell Bees were unable to emulate the great man. They may have buzzed like bees, but they floated more like a Monty Python style ton weight dropped in a river and, as for their sting – more akin to that of a butterfly i.e. not at all. It was Bison who did the stinging with two short handed goals out of their four and another fantastic shut out performance in the net from Stonewall Stevie Lyle, who has now clocked 155 consecutive minutes on home ice without having his goal breached.

The game started in lively fashion with the mother of all scrambles in front of the Bees’ net. Don’t ask me to describe what happened. Suffice it to say that Carl Ambler, who, in contrast to Lyle, was to suffer a painful night, kept the puck out this time. Bison were lucky not to fall behind in the 13^th minute when James Galazzi latched onto a blind pass from Martin Masa from behind the goal line and hammered the puck against the post. A minute later the Bees were trailing. Put in by Shoeless Joe Miller, Greg “The Specs” Owen found himself in on goal with Greg “Chubbs” Chambers in support. His centring pass set up Chubbs for a shot, but alas he muffed it and scuffed it. The puck moved so slowly towards Ambler that Chubbs could have skated forward and overtaken it. Instead of freezing the puck, Ambler chose to execute a kick save, but succeeded only in shovelling it straight to Owen in front of the net. He hammered home and, rather fortuitously, it was 1-0 Bison. 

A minute later with Cuddly Joe Greener serving solitary for high sticks, Bison nearly scored a short handed goal when Greg “The Specs” set up Nicky “You What?” Watt in front of goal, but the shot hit the post and stayed out. However, with only seconds remaining on the Greener penalty, Bison did score a shortie. Jake Thackray told us that Sister Josephine was a “bloody funny nun” (those under 40 will have to Google or, better still, Youtube Mr. Thackray). Well this was a bloody funny goal. Bison’s Caledonian Captain Tosh Redmond and Coach Doug Sheppard combined to set up Chubbs behind the goal line and wide of the goal. Ambler was convinced he was going to slide a pass across the crease and didn’t guard his goal well enough. Chubbs fired the puck close to but away from goal from a wide angle. It hit Ambler, changed direction and trickled over the line for 2-0 Bison. It was a shame that Mack Sennett wasn’t present or he may have attempted to recruit Ambler for the Keystone Kops. It was a comedy moment and just a pity that Ambler’s ass couldn’t be officially credited with an assist. 

 The 2^nd period saw no goals, but plenty of incident. The Bees were desperate to register a goal to get back into the game and they nearly bagged one in the 36^th minute when Shaun Thompson found himself in on goal. Now Stevie Lyle wasn’t exactly the new kid on the block. He’d been around the block a few times. He knew he had to block the goal as effectively as a breeze block wall, a naval blockade or a blockage in the U-bend and block failure out of his mind. This was no time to suffer a mental block. His head was surely on the block and, if he failed, there would be some blockheaded members of the crowd would want to knock his block off. Guess what? He stepped up to the block and saved with his blocker.

Comedy moment No.2 occurred late in the period with Nicky Watt called for a slash. He headed back towards the bench pretending not to know. Linesman, Mr. Thrower, caught him up and tapped him on the shoulder. It was a classic “Who me?” situation. During the resultant power play Shoeless Joe Miller chased onto a dumped puck. Carl Ambler saw the danger and raced out of his goal faster than a Saturn V transporter adapted for drag racing. On or around the Bees’ blue line the two came together and crashed to the ice in an untidy heap, but, luckily for Ambler, the puck had squirted clear and no Bison player could pick it up and put it into the empty net.

And so into the 3^rd we went and 6 minutes in Bison recorded their second short handed goal of the evening. Set up by Sheppard and Redmond, Cuddly Joe Greener surged forward on the left wing and looked inside to fire a return pass to Coach Sheppard. Alas it was at the end of the penalty kill and Joe thought “Poor old bloke. He’s looks all done in. I’d better have a shot myself”. He turned back, skated forward and let loose a rising wrist shot, which beat Ambler blocker side for 3-0 Bison.

At 0-3 in arrears and with only 12 minutes remaining, the Bees desperately needed some luck in front of goal. Could they come back from this seemingly hopeless position? That seemed as likely as Lord Lucan riding Shergar to victory in the Derby and so it proved, for, only 2 minutes later, Bison hammered a 4th and it was all over bar the shouting, most of which was done by the Howling Man in Block C by the way. The scorer this time was Lumberjack Joe Rand, who received a pass from Greg “The Specs” Owen. Alas the pass was to his feet not his stick, but he brilliantly sidefooted the puck forward onto his stick, Lionel Messi style, and took off towards the Bees' net. Joe’s supple and indeed lissom form nimbly, yet forcefully, surged past the static, immobile, unmoving and seemingly indolent, not to mention comparatively sedentary formation that was opposition defense, whose representatives could be forgiven, especially by the Bison faithful, for doing nothing more than admire the aesthetics of Joe’s footwork and subsequent exquisite movement, agility, acceleration and scoring end result. In other words he hammered through the D damned quick and rifled in. 4-0 Bison and, if the Bees travelling support had thought it wasn’t all over already, it was now. The fat lady was singing "Goodnight Vienna".

But the entertainment had not finished. With 5 minutes remaining Cuddly Joe Greener delivered a massive hit on Scott Spearing, which was adjudged interference by the all powerful referee, Dave Cloutman. Spearing is just about as popular at Planet Ice as the scrapings from the inside of a medieval philanderer’s codpiece (sorry that’s going too far). After the hit he skated to the Bees bench and back, all the while muttering away until eventually settling on Nicky Watt to give vent to his considered opinion. It was an unsavoury confrontation. The air may well have been blue, but we were unable to catch the verbal exchange from faraway Block C. Certainly the two players did vaguely resemble a pair of East End barrow boys with Tourette's syndrome attempting to shout each other down. No blows were exchanged, much to the chagrin of the crowd, whose blood lust had risen to fever pitch by this time. Nearly but not quite. The officials prevented an ugly scene of violence erupting and delay of game penalties were imposed on each.

So 4-0 Bison the game ended and Bison’s man of the match was, once again, Stevie Lyle, with another shutout, which he fully deserved with a rock solid performance culminating in two amazing saves within seconds of each other in the final minute. They say that from little acorns mighty oak trees grow. Well I doubt that Stevie started life as an acorn, but to the Bees forwards he certainly must have appeared as mighty as the mightiest of mighty oaks. They just couldn’t find a way past him.  

And a final word for birthday boy Cuddly Joe Greener. They say the grass is greener on the other side and, as far as the Bees were concerned Joe Greener was on the other side, grazing through their pastures, exposing their agricultural defending, ploughing up their fields and leaving their bovine blueline to chew the cud while helping his team harvest a bumper crop of goals. Bison took the bull by the horns and made hay whilst the sun shone. The Bracknell chickens had well and truly come home to roost. They would have had to have waited until the cows came home for a goal, which proved as elusive as a needle in a haystack. Their forward lines looked as useful as a milk bucket under a bull and as unlikely to score as Daisy the Guernsey dairy cow would have of carting off the winner’s rosette in the sheepdog trials at the Romsey show.