Bison Bag the Bounty as Bees Bumble and Blunder

Bison 1 Bracknell Bees 0

21/12/13

It was a relatively quiet night at Planet Ice with both the Howling Man and the Crinkly Haired Lady not in attendance and thus depriving their fellow fans of their considered opinions. Bison bagged the points in this Christmas prelude game, but this could not be described as champagne hockey unless you had consumed lots of the aforementioned alcoholic beverage before you passed judgement. It wasn’t a great performance by Bison, clearly suffering from the absence of injured Joe Rand, but the Bees, also with a number of scratches to be fair, looked pretty well as flat as a pukka pie which had been put through granny’s mangle. A shut out for Dean Skinns, but not one which he had to work very hard to achieve. Sure he stopped 21 on target shots, but they were routine saves by his standards and he wasn’t required to produce the heroics which we have been so used to seeing from him in recent weeks. To be brutally frank the Bees lines looked as ineffectual as one composed of Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst.

 

The 1^st period saw Bison well on top, outshooting the Bees by 11-4, but with neither side giving the goal judges anything to do. The period was not, however, without incident, culminating in a flurry of penalties starting in the 13^th minute with the Bees called for too many men on the ice. 53 seconds into the 5 on 4 power play Tomas “Grandmaster” Karpov was sent down the steps for high sticking, making it a 4 on 4, which was to become a 4 on 3 shortly afterwards following an opprobrious fracas of the most virulent variety. It began with a robust interchange on the boards behind the goal between Kurt “The Knife” Reynolds and Scott “The Turtle” Spearing, everybody’s favourite agitator. The whistle blew and the players drifted apart. Suddenly and for reasons known only to the two players, Spearing charged towards Reynolds intent on inflicting serious injury upon his person. He looked just about as angry as King Kong would look if he had had his last banana nicked by a naughty gibbon. Kurt stood his ground as the officials waded in and slapped a 2 roughing on the ratlike Spearing. The two were to clash again later in the game as I shall reveal.

Bison snatched the lead in the 28^th minute. Lukas Smital fell foul of the law. He slashed and was observed doing so. Incarceration beckoned for the hapless Czech. However, the kindly Uncle Joe Miller ensured that Smital did not serve his full sentence. A cross ice pass from Marvellous Miroslav Vantroba set up his fellow blueliner Zach “Sully” Sullivan for the slapshot. All Alex Mettam wanted for Christmas was a shutout, but clearly he must have been naughty at some stage during the year as Santa didn’t grant his wish. Uncle Joe deflected Sully’s shot past the hapless netman and it was 1-0 Bison. The concession of the go behind goal caused the Bees’ faithful to become fraught with worry. Hair began turning grey and brows wrinkled. In contrast, the goal caused the Bison faithful to kick into touch, cast aside, consign to the garbage can and give the elbow to their reservations as they celebrated in a hearty, loud and raucous manner. Had any Australians been present they may have described the goal as bonzer, fair dinkum or a spiffy rip snorter. They would have patted their pet Joey and broken out a tinny or two in celebration. It was 1-0 Bison.

Shortly afterwards Bison were gifted 2 minutes of a 5 on 3. First of all Shaun Thompson was banged up for holding, then a bench penalty for delay of game was called on the hapless Bees for procrastination at the face off. Surely with a full 2 minutes available and outnumbering the Bees as heavily as Sitting Bull outnumbered Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Bison must score. Alas for the Bison backers, no. The Bees desperately defended the 5 on 3 and in the end the effect was the same as if the Bees had had an inexhaustible supply of fresh D-men to send onto the ice without the requirement to withdraw the tired ones, so that their defensive zone had become choc-a-bloc with a crowd of milling blueliners packed together like sardines, not to mention multiple Alex Mettam clones guarding the net. But in reality there was no legion of goaltender clones nor a battalion of sardine-esc blueliners, just one netman and 3 D-men, performing so effectively that Bison could find no way to score.

The period ended with the solitary goal separating the teams. We had seen a much improved performance from the Bees matching Bison shot for shot. Alas for them Dean Skinns had gobbled up all their goal attempts with the greatest of ease.

Bison came close to increasing their lead early in the 3^rd. Long Ciaron Long intercepted a wayward pass in the neutral zone and barrelled forward. The Bees blueliners bundled back like billy-o. You could not accuse them of behaving like slothful and lethargic devil-may-cares (is that a real word?). They tried their best but they couldn’t catch Long Ciaron. Their pursuit was as hopeless as if, mounted on a rusty foldaway shopping bike with flat tyres and a broken chain, they tried to pursue Sir Bradley Wiggins in full flight on a carbon fibre Pinarello Graal time trial bike. Alas for Bison it was at the end of Long’s shift and he looked pretty well done in. He could manage only a slap shot from range, which Mettam comfortably saved, before he exited over the wall to recuperate.

Shortly afterwards Kurt “The Knife” Reynolds took a puck to the face, renting his visor asunder and gashing his nose. The shooter at close range was Scott “The Turtle” Spearing, who clearly thought he was going to be called and almost certainly thrown out of the game, as he went to the fallen Bison blueliner and offered his condolences. Duracell Man was convinced that it was a stick to the face, but the officials thought otherwise, as Spearing received no penalty. As for Reynolds, he was patched up and continued in the game wearing scratched Carl “Scooter” Grahams’s helmet in substitution of his own. (NB Scooter was scratched not the helmet). Before play had restarted, Cuddly Joe Greener received a 10 unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, possibly for confronting Spearing, but I have to confess I did not see the incident. As for Spearing, he continued in the game, somewhat fortuitously many believed, but minutes later he might have wished he had not been on the ice as he muffed a 2 on 1 breakaway opportunity. He chose to shoot himself (not with a gun of course) rather than pass to his wide open team-mate at the back door. Skinns had the post covered and the puck sailed past the post and hit the side netting. “What a bad shot,” opinionated the Bespectacled Youth. And it was. It was a textbook example of how to waste a 2 on 1 opportunity, from which you should always score.  

Kurt “The Knife” was then called for slashing. Defending a 5 on 4, the last thing you need to do is commit another offence. That would be as undesirable as the Bearded Rabble Rouser of Block A coming home and finding that his eccentric butler has borrowed one of his Savile Row suits to use as an oily rag to clean the engine of  his Harley Davidson. However, that’s exactly what happened. Referee Cloutman saw Nicky Chinn clout a man (Pavel Stycek to be precise) and he slapped a 2 roughing + 10 misconduct on the angry Bison skipper. Bison now had 1:18 to defend a 5 on 3. This they did as effectively as the Bees had defended their 3 on 5 earlier in the game and the visitors were left regretting their failure to capitalise on a golden opportunity to get back on level terms. 

The clock was ticking down and with a minute left Alex Mettam was pulled from the net to allow a 6^th Bee to bumble around on the ice. All to no avail. Suddenly singing could be heard. Was it the Everly Brothers with a rendition of “Bye-bye, Love”? Or maybe the Bay City Rollers with “Bye-bye, Baby”. Thankfully not the latter. No it was the fat lady warblng “Bye-bye” to the visitors. The Bracknell Bees had tried to trace a precarious path to a venerable victory over the Basingstoke Bison, but their footsteps had faltered and now only a beating beckoned. The final buzzer sounded as Tomas “Grandmaster” Karpov fired a speculative empty net chance high and wide and the points were in the bag for Bison. Rob Lamey for the Bees and Kurt “The Knife” Reynolds for Bison were adjudged top bananas. Often overlooked for the MoM award and maybe taken for granted, it was good to see Kurt bag the beers for yet another superb blueline performance from arguably the best British D-man in the EPL.