Shoot Out Win Shoots Bison Back to the Top

Bison 3 Milton Keynes Lightning 2 (shoot out)

21/11/15

Bison continued their good home ice form with a shoot out win over MKL last night thanks to S/O goals from Lumberjack Joe Rand and Long Ciaron Long and a poke check and a save from Tomas Hiadlovsky. It turned out to be the tough robustly contested game which we were expecting in contrast to last week’s, shall we say, less than competitive 10-2 victory over the bumbling Bees from Bracknell.

Bison had the upper hand in P1 but neither team could find the net. There was, however, an unseemly fracas of the most unruly and indeed unholy variety with only 4 minutes on the clock. An initial disagreement between Shaun “The Sheep” Thompson and the ever irritating Grant McPherson was joined by Jordan Cowney, who was fortunate not to be identified as the third man, not of the Harry Lime variety of course, but of the hockey fight variety, or he may have been ejected from the game. He did have a 2 + 2 for roughing imposed upon him and with Thompson and McPherson each receiving a 2 roughing the result was a 4 minute Bison power play, which MK defended well.

The interval saw the Bison backers deep in contemplation. They say that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Well he wasn’t present at Planet Ice last night, but the Bespectacled Youth was and he fiddled with his glasses while the Man with 3 Ear-rings fiddled with his ear-rings and Oxobloke fiddled with the cap of his gravy flask as they contemplated.

P2 opened and a goal on 21:37 assigned parity to the mortuary slab, albeit temporarily. Lewis Hook fired a forward pass in the direction of Blaz Emersic. Marvellous Miroslav Vantroba tried to intercept, but failed and now Emersic was past him. With Jordan Cownie steaming up in support and Vantoba out of the picture, there developed a 2 on 1. The MK men didn’t hang around. A pass to the back door and there was Cownie to smash the puck home past a hung out to dry Tomas Hiadlovsky. The hapless netman couldn’t have been happy with his D-men. It must remain a matter of speculation as to whether he wished upon them a fate of eternal damnation in the fires of Hell where they are for evermore condemned to shovel coal into the Devil’s blast furnace whilst being jabbed by trident wielding demons. Probably not. But he must have made a mental note to cross them off his Christmas card list. 0-1 Lightning.

The unfortunate Bison goaltender needn’t have worried for a mere 4 minutes later, parity, which we thought was dead, returned to the land of the living as a shot from Cuddly Joe Greener caused goal judge Honest Pete’s finger (or maybe it’s his thumb) to jab down on the button to illuminate the goal light. Long Ciaron Long and Kurt “The Scissors” Reynolds combined to send Cuddly Joe in past the blue line. He decided to have a crack from long range so before he’d even reached the point on the goaltender’s right he sent in a pinpoint accurate shot arrowing towards the top corner of the net. Even Giant Haystacks, that renowned 6’ 10”, 30 stone and somewhat immobile wrestler of yesteryear, could not have blocked the goal by lying on his side in the crease (I am sure he wasn’t 4 feet wide). But it mattered not as the puck sailed into the net just under the bar and past the raised catcher of Dean “Deano” Skinns. Speedway Girl, holder of membership card no. 001 of the Dean Skinns Appreciation Society and also a Bison fan, didn’t know whether to be happy or sad. 1-1.

The period chuntered towards a conclusion and it looked as if the sides were to going to re-enter their respective locker rooms with parity alive and kicking. But parity’s hopes of a sustained period of employment were to be cruelly dashed with just under 3 minutes on the P2 clock. Bison took the lead for the first time in the evening with a truly superb individual unassisted goal from Tomas “Grandmaster” Kaprov. He scrapped for the puck on the boards, gained possession and tried to break forward but was held. He broke free and skated in on Deano. His daring dash, delivered with determination, doggedness and decisiveness, did draw the defence and developed discombobulation, discomfiture and distraction in the distended, disconnected and discontented D. Eh? OK never mind all that. All we need to know is that he beat Deano with an exquisite piece of goaltender bamboozlement as he sent he puck high into the net off his backhand. As his team mates huddled round to congratulate him, they must have sung to themselves “Oo-Bee-Do. I wanna be like you-hu-hu.” But just as King Louie couldn’t be like Mowgli, so they can’t be like Karpov. The Headbanger, a much closer observer of the goal that I was, confirmed that it had been a piece of stick handing skill possessing subliminal qualities. 2-1 Bison.


 

In 1840 a collection of tales and poems by Edgar Allen Poe was published under the title “Bizarre and Arabesque”. What happened next may not have been Arabeque in nature, but it certainly was bizarre as MK Coach Russell pulled Dean Skinns from the net and replaced him with, not Johnny Marr, but Jordan Marr. It must remain a matter of conjecture as to the reason for this decision as Deano was certainly not deserving of such a cruel fate. (See footnote below for an account of the bizarre death of Poe and therein a Bison connection).

Shortly after the buzzer sounded to signal an end to P2 and off to the locker rooms the icemen went. It had been an even period with 11 shots on goal apiece and Bison may have considered themselves fortunate to be leading, but who could argue after that astonishing goal from the Grandmaster had rebroken the deadlock.

Into P3 we went and deadlock returned on 43:18. The Bison D were caught out, caught napping and caught with their trousers down, but thankfully not literally. A flowing move involving Markku Tahtinen, Marko Luomala set up Leigh Jamieson near the hash marks to the goaltender’s right with his stick held high in preparation for a slap shot. Can you imagine giving birth to a 14 lb baby? Probably not. But that is reputedly what Mollie Arbuckle, a lady slight of frame, did on the 24th of March, 1887. The gargantuan baby, a bouncing boy, grew into a Herculean dietarily challenged adult weighing over 300 lbs. He was of course the silent movie colossus “Fatty” Arbuckle - they weren’t very PC with their nicknames in those days. At the peak of his fame Fatty’s earnings were $1m a year and let’s not forget that was nearly a hundred years ago. What relevance has this? Well had Fatty Arbuckle been the Bison goaltender at this moment he could have blocked the net much more fully than Tomas Hiadlovsky, who is of slighter frame and who does not suffer from the dietary challenges which Mr. Arbuckle must have. Jamieson’s stick came down and the puck arrowed into the net, causing Honest Pete’s goal light finger to re-enter the world of employment. It has to be said that the goal was a cracker. Not a Jacobs Cream Cracker on which you would place a carefully sculpted square of Wensleydale, Wallace and Grommit’s favourite cheese, of course, but you didn’t think I meant that anyway, did you? By the way did you know that Wenselydale cheese was made using sheep’s milk in Wensleydale (well where else?) by Cistercian monks from 1150 until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1540. Now you know. 2-2 it was.

We saw no more goals in the period nor in overtime. The best opportunity in OT fell to MK when Hiadlovsky was dispossessed way outside his crease and ended up bundled over and floundering on the ice. Was it goalie interference? The Bespectacled Youth, defender of all atrocities committed on goaltenders or at least Bison ones, thought so as he gave vent to his opinion with an anguished shout of “INTERFERENCE!”. Referee Pickett rejoiced in a contrary opinion to the Youth’s, however, and no sonorous blast emanated from his whistle. Play continued and an empty net gaped. It looked like a certain game winning goal was to be scored, but Shaun “The Sheep” Thompson brilliantly prevented a shot on the net and saved the day.

And so to a shoot out, which ended as I have already described. As Long Ciaron’s winning shot slid across the line, Planet Ice was filled with the sounds of shrieking and screaming, yowling and yammering, bellowing and bawling as the Bison backers celebrated their team’s skin of the teeth win. Greener and Luomala were elected Men of the Match.

Footnote : On October 3, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore delirious, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He died 4 days later (Poe that is not Walker). Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition, and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own. Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring. Who was the mysterious Reynolds? An ancestor of our own Kurt “The Scissors” Reynolds perhaps? I told you there was a Bison connection.