Bison 6 Sheffield Steeldogs 2
30/3/14
2 goal Joe Rand
gave Bison a leg up to the Coventry playoffs in a one sided 2 leg victory over
the Steeldogs, which made the Dogs look like a load of legless men, as Bison
whipped the legs from under them, leaving them without a leg to stand on.
Bison’s quest for play off silverware most definitely has legs.
Bison had seized
the advantage by winning the first leg by 2-0 at the Dogs’ kennel the previous
evening. It was a night of surely the most bizarre officiating ever seen. The
officials failed to call numerous infractions, the most outrageous of which was
a deliberate kick on a prostrate Deans Skinns by the odious and detestable Craig
Elliott, who was to prove equally repulsive and repellent at Planet Ice. Ray
Charles and Stevie Wonder would have seen more that these officials. However,
that was history. Last night Bison had to continue their dominance and make
sure that the Steeldogs ant was crushed under the size 13 Doc Marten which is
Basingstoke Bison. This they did and an out-of-sight 8-2 aggregate win could
have caused the crowd to fill the auditorium with a rendition of …♫ We’re all
going to Coventry…♫…We’re all going to Coventry…♫….La-la-la-la…♫…La-la-la-la…♫,
but thankfully didn’t. Instead they shook the very rafters of Planet Ice singing
the traditional “Great Escape” at an elephantine volume and why not?
It wasn’t long
before the game sheet filler outer was scribbling. On 4 minutes Tom Squires was
thrown into solitary for interference and in the resultant power play Bison
grabbed the lead. Cuddly Joe Greener behind the goal line fed Tomas
“Grandmaster” Karpov in front and he slid the puck straight through Steeldogs
goaltender Dailbor Sedlar. There were more holes in and around the poor fellow than
in a tea strainer (those under 40 and from the tea bag generation won’t know
what one of those is). The puck passed between his pad and blocker and it was
1-0 Bison.
On 6 minutes the
Dogs levelled it with a power play goal of their own. It was a Greg goal. With
Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird on the naughty boy’s step for interference, Greg Wood
banged in a rebounded shot from Greg Chambers. The second assistant was
declared as Lee Haywood (not a Greg). 1-1. Could the Dogs, buoyed up by finally
getting the puck past Dean Skinns, who had played out of his skin at Sheffield,
go on from here and make it a contest? Well actually no, as I shall relate.
Shortly after we
were entertained by a massive hit from Bison skipper Nicky Chinn. He hammered
into a Dogs player with such titanic force that the man disappeared from view
behind the boards thus preventing me from identifying him. So colossal was the
hit that the Man with 3 Ear Rings speculated that he might have been knocked
clean out of his skates.
Bison restored
their lead in the 15th minute with as pretty a goal as you’re ever likely to see.
Andy “Machine Gun” Melachrino broke from his own defensive zone along the left
wing. His movement forward couldn’t be described as a somnolent
meander. Far from it in fact. It was direct and with pace, power and purpose.
Into the offensive zone he moved before picking out a pass inside to
“Grandmaster” Karpov. The Dogs’ D must have seen the danger. This was no time
for them to fool around, goof around, loaf around, mess around or hang around,
but, like headless chickens, all they did was run around. Long Ciaron Long was
charging up the right wing in support and met Karpov’s pass with a snap shot,
which flew in before Sedlar could react. 2-1 Bison. Long Ciaron threw himself
at the Grandmaster and the pair collapsed to the ice in a loving embrace like a
pair of copulating turtles. It was a very special goal, not only in its
execution, but also its significance. It was Long Ciaron’s 20th
Bison goal this season. He joins an impressive contingent of 6 other Bison
players (well 5 current and 1 former to be pedantically correct) with 20 or more goals this season - Karpov, Rand, Greener, Melachrino,
Miller and Connolly.
2 minutes into
the 3rd and it was 3-1. Set up by Chinn, Aaron “Billy” Connolly
fired in a shot which Sedlar saved. Alas for him Lumberjack Joe Rand latched
onto the rebound, pirouetted like a ballerina and slid the puck past Sedlar.
There would be
no more scoring in P2, but the period ended with the abhorrent and loathsome
Craig Elliott being banged up for high sticks and then receiving an after the
buzzer 10 misconduct for abuse of officials.
And so the final
20 minutes of Planet Ice hockey faced off with Bison enjoying a comfortable 5-1
aggregate lead and playing well. The Bison backers didn’t have to wait long to
make their vocal chords even more enflamed with another raucous goal celebration.
On 44 minutes Nicky Chinn bamboozled the Dogs D and sent a cross crease pass
onto the stick tape of Lumberjack Joe Rand, who snapped it past Sedlar for 4-1.
The Dogs were
getting frustrated and it all boiled over a minute and a half later when a Tom
Squires interference infraction attracted the ire of Danny “The Iceberg”
Ingoldsby, who seemed to want to take on all comers right in front of the Dogs’
bench. He was slapped with a 2 + 2 for roughing, Kohron with a 2 roughing and
Squires a 2 interference. The Dogs men went to join the unsavoury and repugnant
Craig Elliott in the box where there was standing room only – well almost.
Danny “The
Iceberg”, clearly no shrinking violet, although tender of years, took his legal
revenge on Squires shortly after his release from the dark, dang dungeon that
is the Sapphire Cleaning penalty box with a massive hit into the boards in
front of the Bison bench. Tipu Sahib, the Sultan of Mysore, once said that it
was better to live one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep. Danny
clearly agreed with this sentiment because there was nothing sheep like about
the bone crunching body check he delivered. The hapless Squires was bent in
half over the top of the wall. Moments later when Ingoldsby left the ice the
helmet slapping celebrations he received from his team mates confirmed their
approval of his perpetration of legal violence on the hapless Squires.
Bison added to
the Dogs’ misery with 2 goals in 16 seconds 52 minutes into the game, which
made the Dogs look like so many lemons and as stationary as sacks of potatoes. The
first was a wrist shot by Andy Melons (assists to Long and Karpov) and the
second a blast from Cameron “Popeye” Wynn, set up by Marvellous Miroslav
Vantroba. That made it 6-1 and no way back for the Dogs, who were reeling like
a man who has drunk 10 pints, smoked 5 joints and then been smashed in the face
with a frying pan. Coach Payette called a time out and netman Sedlar was
replaced by Bradley Day. 2 minutes later they managed to pull one back scored
by Edgars Bebris assisted by Kohron and Hirst. Don’t ask me to describe the
goal. I wasn’t looking. But who cares?
A minute later
there was an appalling challenge on Aaron “Billy” Connolly by guess who? Yes it
was the repellent and repugnant Craig Elliott. He clipped Billy and sent him
cartwheeling through the air. The crowd rose to their feet in unison and bayed
their protestation like a crowd of angry villagers. For those who had brought
their pitchforks to the arena, now was the time to wave them. But nobody had.
The Howling Man opened up with a characteristic tirade as loud as a burst of
rapid fire from a Vickers machine gun, as opposed to a vicar’s machine gun (I
doubt whether many vicars carry them). The offense was worthy of capital
punishment surely? No merely a 2 minute minor for the obnoxious and unpleasant
Elliott. Lucky man. I am now running out of adjectives to put before the name of Elliott and, in case I haven’t expressed it clearly enough, no I don't like him.
The clock ticked
down to zero and Bison had progressed in the quest to find the pot of gold
(actually more of a chrome egg cup) at the end of the Coventry rainbow. Let’s
not go off on a red herring. Steeldog faces were red with embarrassment. This
was black and white with no grey areas. During Bison’s purple patch, which was
really the whole game, the Dogs had shown the white flag and earned themselves
a black mark from their coach. Talk about showing a red rag to a bull. Payette
was purple in the face. It was a red letter day the Bison forwards who had been
shown the green light to paint the town red and put the Dogs’ goal account well
into the red. They had beaten their opponents black and blue, resulting in a
blue feeling on a very grey evening for the visiting fans. They must have been
green with envy at the talent on show on the Bison bench. They say the grass is
greener on the other side, but the Dogs faithful must have hoped in vain for a
white knight like Joe Greener or, failing that, some sort of black magic
solution to put their account back in the black and their team in the pink. The blueprint for success had eluded them.
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