Cats Scratch Out a Well Taken Road Win

Bison 3 Swindon Wildcats 5

7/3/15

Last weekend we saw the EPL championship decided. As expected, it was the table topping Telford Tigers who took the title. Congratulations to them and in particularly Bison’s own (alas no longer) Joe Miller. Unless they have a Mr. Creosote explosion of form it will be the Guildford Flames who will claim 2^nd spot. A closer contest is the battle for 3^rd, with 3 teams, Bison, the Swindon Wildcats and the Peterborough Phantoms, scrapping for that final podium place. Last night’s game at Planet Ice between Bison and the Cats was, therefore, of particular significance. 

P1 opened well for Bison. They dominated play and looked slick in their passing and movement and solid in defence until allowing two breakaway attempts in the 8^th minute. First of all Floyd Taylor found himself in on goal in a 1 on 1 with Dean Skinns. He shot, but Deano butterflied and blocked the puck. One would have thought that the Bison D, having thus been caught out as easily as a bunch of schoolboys smoking behind the bike sheds after failing to post a lookout, they wouldn’t have been caught in this way again. Alas they were for within seconds of the Taylor breakaway there was another. Unfortunately for Bison the goal assailant this time was the deadly Aaron Nell and he made no mistake with a rifling shot past Deano for 0-1 Cats. Sam Bullas and Toms Rutkis picked up the assists for the goal.

The Cats doubled their lead on 13 minutes with a cracker of a clapper – a slap shot from the point fired in with such pace by Lee Richardson that Skinns was unable to react as the puck found the gap between his person and his post. 0-2 Cats. Assists were dished out to Jonas Hőőg and Aaron Nell. Even the negative moaners, the grumbling curmudgeonlies and the begrudging naysayers in the Bison blocks had to admit it was a spectacular goal.

Bison had to find something from somewhere and they did 3 minutes later. Cuddly Joe Greener and Ryan “You What?” Watt combined to supply Marvellous Miroslav Vantroba behind the goal line and on the boards. He dug the puck out and emerged goalside. Somehow he managed to squeeze the puck under Stevie Lyle in the Cats’ net. 1-2. It was an unfortunate goal for the Cats’ to concede. Defensively they had loused up, screwed up, messed up and mucked up, but it mattered not because P2 proved to be a disaster for Bison. Which ancient philosopher said “if you put your chances away you win hockey games, if you don’t you won’t”? Was it Socrates, Plato or Aristotle? I’m not sure, but whoever it was should have been at Planet Ice last night where the events of P2 proved this theory. Outshooting the Cats by 9-6, Bison couldn’t ripple the net, whereas the Cats managed to do it twice from their 6 shots on target. Both came late in the period and sent the Cats in at the 2^nd buzzer with a comfortable 3 goal lead despite having been outplayed. But all credit to them they did what Socrates, Plato and Aristotle ordered and Bison did not.

The first of the Cats’ P2 goals came on 37 minutes. The move was exquisite and elegant, sublime and stylish, pleasing to the eye and aesthetic, even to the Bison backers, albeit through gritted teeth. Sam Bullas picked up the puck on the right wing, charged forward, then skated across the goal, bypassing a gaggle of players, none of whom sought to challenge him and then slid a backhander across the line. 1-3 Cats. Floyd Taylor and Toms Rutkis assisted.

Barely 2 minutes later it was 1-4. Fed by Tomasz Malasinski, Aaron Nell fired an across the crease pass, which Skinns attempted to poke check away. He failed to make contact and, from that moment, it was curtains, for there at the back door with an empty net to aim at was Jonas Hőőg. They say that legendary Stalingrad sniper Vasily Zaitsev never missed. Well Hőőg does sometimes, but not on this occasion. Even his grandmother would have buried it. Thankfully for the Cats’ faithful it wasn’t Grandma Hőőg on the end of Nell’s pass, it was Jonas and he fired in without ado. It was an “Ooooo Betty” moment for Deano.

The Bison team must have left the ice at the end of P2 as frustrated as a man chasing a greyhound that has just stolen his hair piece. They had failed to find a way past Lyle, but, despite allowing the Cats only 6 shots on goal in the period, as I have already mentioned, they had let in 2 avoidable goals and now found themselves with the north face of the Eiger to scale. It appeared that they stood as much chance of winning the game as someone had of remaining in the land of the living after getting on the wrong side of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot all at once.

Which way was P3 going to go? The Man from MI5, observing incognito from Block C, may have had the blueprint for success on a piece of microfilm concealed in the heel of his shoe, but he didn’t reveal it. There were some who feared that Bison might give up the ghost and the Cats would dish out a clawing. But such individuals surely deserve to be, well perhaps not hung, drawn and quartered, but certainly thrashed to within an inch of their lives for harbouring such defeatist thoughts. There must have been at least one optimist amongst the Bison backers who thought that Bison could launch a comeback, but I have to confess I met no such individual. Well whoever that person was he or she was proved to be right and we saw a totally committed P3 Bison, peppering the Cats’ goal with shots, 21 on target to be precise, and scoring 2 goals to bring it back to a one goal game with 10 minutes to play and setting up an exciting finish.

Bison’s second goal of the game came on 45 minutes. Aaron “Billy” Connolly and Bison skipper Nicky Chinn did the spade work to set up Coach Sheppard at the back door. Maple Leaf Doug’s one timer found the net and it was 2-4. A glimmer of hope was now showing.

Bison were now on the up, in the ascendancy and holding the whip hand. They converted their aspirations into something tangible – another goal. On 49 minutes Lumberjack Joe Rand fired in a shot, which Lyle pad saved. The hapless goaltender then appeared to either lose sight of the puck or have an attack of lethargy because he didn’t move to cover or poke check the puck away, but stood as still as one of those living statues who had had no money thrown into his box. The other living statue which is Nicky Chinn, on the other hand, must have received a donation as he moved quickly to the rebounded puck and tapped it in. 3-4. Had the Bishop of Basingstoke been present he would have celebrated the goal by hurling his mitre it into the air. His counterpart, the Bishop of Swindon, would have thrown his mitre to the floor and trampled it into the remnants of his discarded Pukka Pie. However, neither were present, or, if they were, they were as incognito as the Man from MI5, and I saw no episcopal headgear treated in these ways. (In case you’re wondering, these ecclesiastical gentlemen really exist).

The final minutes saw a bombardment of the Swindon goal akin to a Naval broadside, an artillery barrage and a kitchen sink throwing competition all rolled into one. But Bison could not break through and with 1:16 left, Coach Sheppard called a time out. Play resumed with Skinns pulled and a 6 on 5. The bombardment continued. One shot rebounded off Lyle’s pads and was picked up by a Cats’ player (sorry I’m not sure who that was). His shot towards the empty net was brilliantly deflected away by the stick of a Marvellous  Miroslav Vantoba at full stretch. But it was only a temporary respite as, shortly after, Swindon were presented with another empty net opportunity and this time they made no mistake. Adam Harding picked up the puck and fed Tomas Kana. He took his time to find the space to slip the puck past the covering Bison players and into the gaping goal. 3-5 and game over.

All credit to the Cats for a vital road win which has now swung the pendulum for a 3^rd place EPL finish back towards them. Despite being outshot by 46-22 they took their chances and withstood a P3 bombardment. Bison can take heart from an outstanding P3 performance. At the end of P2 and 1-4 in arrears, some teams may have surrendered. Long and Nell were elected top bananas for their respective teams.