Bison 3
Bracknell Bees 4 (shoot out)
9/11/2013
On paper it
looked like a stuffing in the making. Bison, jousting for top spot in the EPL
and on the back of two consecutive 4 point weekends which included a dominant
5-1 home victory over the Guildford Flames, entertained the Bracknell Bees. The
Dumbledores (yes it’s a real word – I told you before) came to the Basingstoke pad
bottom but one in the EPL, with a horror weekend of 0-7 and 0-6 defeats last
time out, a record of only 1 road win in 9 this season, a very poor EPL
record at Planet Ice and an import light on the night. Surely it was going to
be a cakewalk. Well no! Not even Nostradamus would have predicted what we were
about to see. Well, why would he have bothered? He was too busy predicting the
Great Fire of London, World War 2 and the French Revolution. The Bees returned
home with the points in the bag. What we saw was a scrappy game with two poor
teams playing tic-tac-toe hockey without the toe and frequently lacking the tac
also. In the end it went down to a penalty shoot out with Grant Rounding making
himself hero of the night with the winning score.
The 1st
period belonged to Bison. Although clearly struggling to produce flowing hockey
with crisp passing, they did manage to hit the target with more shots than they
managed for the rest of the game, 21 to be precise. However, by the end of the
period they had only a solitary score to their credit and failure to capitalise
on their 1st period dominance proved their undoing in the final
analysis. It was Lumberjack Joe Rand, continuing his fine scoring streak, who
bagged the goal in the 12th minute. Set up by Bison skipper Nicky
Chinn, Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird, the most superstitious man in the EPL, fired in
a shot from just inside the blue line. We heard a thud. Annetts had saved it
with his pads. However, much to the chagrin of the hapless netman, the puck
passed through him and came to rest behind him. Lumberjack Joe was quickest to
the loose puck and stabbed it home for 1-0 Bison. A celebration, most lawless
and licentious, lifted from the legion of locals.
Having been
outplayed and outshot by 21-9 in the 1st the Bees had to do
something more positive in the 2nd otherwise even a stuttering Bison
were capable of going on to seal an easy victory. They didn’t look capable. Buy
they produced that something from nowhere within a minute of the restart.
Smital and Thompson combined to set up Ollie Bronniman at the back door and he
fired home with no-one to challenge him. The goal had come out of the blue. The
Bison faithful looked as shocked as if they had seen the Archbishop of
Canterbury fired from a cannon in the Planet Ice car park. Perhaps he had been,
but, if so, I didn’t see it.
Bison needed to
snatch back the initiative and this they did only 4 minutes later. Cuddly Joe
Greener fed Shoeless Joe Miller, who fired a diagonal cross ice pass to Coach
Sheppard steaming in in front of goal. Maple Leaf Doug delayed and then with goaltender
Annetts committed he fired in through the gap between the hapless goaltender
and the post. The Bison fans leaped to their feet and opened their mouths wide
to emit their wild roars of approval. So much so that you could see their
fillings except those who had paid extra for white fillings of course.
Things were not
quite looking rosy, but at least at 2-1 ahead Bison had the opportunity to take
the game by the scruff of the neck and go on from there. However, it was a
stuttering Bees team who would dominate the period, turning a 0-1 deficit into
parity of 3-3 by the end with some smart finishing. Their second equaliser came
only a minute later. And it was to be Bison’s greatest alumnus, Tosh Redmond,
Mr. Basingstoke himself, who would thrust the dagger into Bison hearts. Set up
by Bendik (nothing to do with chocolates), Grant Rounding fired in a shot which
Dean Skinns saved, but could not hold. The rebound fell to Tosh at the back
door. He was the right man in the right
place at the right time. Even Bobby Caldwell would have scored. (Bobby who? Why
Minnie Caldwell’s cat of course). And he did (Tosh not Bobby that is).
4 minutes before the end of the period Bison managed to resnatch (that’s not a real word by the way) the lead. Don’t ask me to describe the sequence of events after a shot was fired in by Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird. The spilling of the puck by Annetts resulted in the mother of all mellĂ©es in front of the net. Suddenly the whistle blew, goal light came on and the net moved off its moorings all in the space of a fraction of a second. The officials decided it was a good goal and 3-2 Bison it was. It was a Joe goal – Miller from Greener from Baird. Should it have been allowed? The Headbanger was dubious. “Definitely players in the blue paint” said he in the interval. But a goal it was and a stuttering Bison had their noses in front once more.
Up until now the
game had been characterised by a serious of strange decisions from the
officials. Earlier it had caused the Howling Man to become very angry. His rant
included the words “Open your eyes”, but I failed to decipher anything else he bellowed.
Clearly the officials were proving to be the grit in his hockey spectating
Vaseline. The poor officiating was typified shortly after the goal by a
slashing by Spearing (I think) down onto Marvelous Miroslav Vantroba’s arm. So
obvious was it that the whole of Planet Ice saw it and so noisy was it that it
must have been heard in Timbuktu. However, nothing was given and the Bison
blueliner was reduced to throwing his stick to the ice in frustration. I once
knew a limerick which began “A young man from Capricorn Tropic, Had sight that
was rather myopic”. Enough of that. Judging
by Mr Szuchs’s and Mrs Johnston’s failure to see the slash I must conclude that
they may be from Capricorn Tropic themselves.
Could Bison now
see out the period? To give away their advantage before the second buzzer would
have been ass undesirable as the contents of a spittoon from the Lucky Strike
Saloon in Dodge City circa 1880. But that’s exactly what happened. In the final
minute of the period the Bees grabbed a power play goal with Cuddly Joe Greener
banged up for hooking. Bendik set up Lukas Smital for a shot. Skinns’s save
went straight to the Margate Marauder, Ollie Bronniman, who slammed it in for
3-3. Troubled thoughts clouded the minds of those in the home blocks, as their
Bees counterparts showed their exhilaration with a display of unbridled and
frenzied effervescence.
The period ended
with an unseemly altercation between Marvellous Miroslav and the aforementioned
Spearing, always a popular opponent wherever he plies his trade of agitator,
which is everywhere really. It was probably as a follow on from the slashing
incident. Their opinions concerning each other’s conduct looked as far apart
as the views on capitalism of Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill. It ended with
Vantroba on his backside inside the net – rather undignified I thought. A
coincidental 2 + 2 roughing for each was awarded.
I will not waste
space by detailing the stuttering, spluttering machinations of the two teams’
disjointed efforts to win the game in the 3rd and subsequent
overtime period. (The frustration of the crowd was epitomised by the
wife of Howling Man driven to utter “Just put the puck in the net” in her
vexation). However, I would report that Ollie Bronniman did receive a 10
misconduct + game penalty with 33 seconds of regular time remaining, probably for
remarks made to the officials. Mr Szuchs indicated his decision by clenching
his fists and driving them into the sides of his generous form. No need to call the boys in blue, Ollie went
quietly until…….on reaching the bench door he did smite the wall with his
stick, then threw the implement away in a fit of pique and then, so I was
informed (reliably?), kicked and trampled on the stacked sticks, breaking a
number.
And so to the
penalty shoot out – a lottery at best. Going in to the last round of the first
3 rounds of shots leading 2-1with Rand and Miller both having put away their
efforts, the Bison backers’ hopes must have been high, but Karpov’s shot was
saved and Smital’s not to bring on a tortuous series of poor penalty shots until
Grant Rounding rounded off proceedings at the end of the 7th round with
a decisive finish and the points were in the bag for the Bees - an outcome that would have left even Nostradamus saying, “I never saw that coming”.
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