Frustrated Phantoms Flounder, Fade and Fall

Bison 3 Peterborough Phantoms 0

2/1/16

Blimey! Heavens above! Gadzooks! Where does one start to write an account of what many are describing as the best game we have seen all season at Planet Ice? First of all there was the importance of the game. It was a table topping clash of first v second. Bison condemned the Phantoms to their third straight defeat to go 3 points clear at the top. Have the Phantoms’ wheels come off? Time will tell. Then we had an astonishing performance from Bison Jon “shut-em-out” Baston with not only his 4^th shut out in only 9 games for Bison but also a display which included saves which could be described as any of - awesome, incredible, marvellous, stunning, unbelievable, breathtaking, astounding, stupefying and magnificent. Indeed all those rolled into one. Then we had a true grit performance from the never-say-die Alan “Prairie Dog” Lack, who on any other night would have carried off the Top Banana award denied to him by Bison’s miracle working netman. Don’t worry I haven’t forgotten Lumberjack Joe Rand, who is supposed to be retired, once more icing as import cover for the injured Tomas “Grandmaster” Karpov, and bagging a brace of goals.

P1 opened in a robust style that would continue for the whole game. The Phantoms were called for a couple of early penalties, but Bison could not take advantage. They had to wait until the 14^th minute to reduce parity to a crumbling ruin. Allow me a small digression, dear reader. I was once a teetotaller until I saw the folly of my ways and I remember sipping Coca-Cola in a shabby bar in Calais circa 1976 and being told by an inebriated Frenchman that “wine is a gift from the Gods”. On 14 minutes we saw a gift, but it wasn’t wine and no well oiled Frenchmen or Gods were involved. It was a gift of a goal from the Phantoms to Bison. Cuddly Joe Greener and Alan “Prairie Dog” Lack scrapped for the puck in the corner. Suddenly Lack managed to squirt a cross ice pass into the slot where Lumberjack Joe Rand lurked. Ever heard of Yogi Berra, one of the greatest Major League Baseball players of all time and inspiration for the cartoon character Yogi Bear. Apart from his sporting achievements, he was famous for his nonsensical utterances, called Yogi-isms. He once said of a restaurant “No-one goes there any more – it’s too crowded.” Well the area in front of the Phantoms’ net could certainly not have been called “crowded”. In fact, apart from Lumberjack Joe, there was no-one there at all. The Phantoms D must have gone to another restaurant. Joe had all the time in the world to work out how he was going to get the puck past Janis Auzins. He took his time until we began to think that he had tarried too long. But no. He drove the puck through the hapless netman’s 5-hole. Honest Pete jammed on his red goal light. It was 1-0 Bison. Had Oscar Wild been present he would have been wild with excitement. Had Joy Beverley been present she would have been overjoyed. Had Felicity Kendal been present she would have adopted feelings of felicity. Assuming they were all Bison backers of course.

It didn’t take Bison long to surge into a 2-0 lead. 2 minutes to be precise. It started with Long Ciaron Long moving the puck forward to René Jarolin on the right wing. He broke free from a challenge, carried the puck forwards and then fired a cross ice pass to an unmarked Ryan “You What” Watt in the slot. I hope you will permit me a second small digression, dear reader when I ask who was the greatest marksman of the Duke of Wellington’s Peninsular army? Why it was Rifleman Tom Plunkett of course (Google him – the tales of his feats are extraordinary). Had he been present at Planet ice last night even he would have been impressed with how Watty picked his spot and fired an unstoppable wrist shot into the top corner of the net past the Auzins glove. Many of the Bison faithful thought they had entered Heaven. Conversely the visiting fans must have felt that they were in the down escalator to the other place.

The period curtain fell without addition to the score sheet and Bison trooped back to the locker room well satisfied with the fruits of their labours. They had outplayed the Phantoms, whose wayward shooting had seen them get only 3 shots on target, whereas Bison had managed 13 and had made their superiority count in goals. The Phantoms needed to come up to scratch, change their leopard spots and pull a rabbit out of the hat because another below par period performance would see Bison deliver a slap on Phantom wrists and disappear over the horizon. (That’s not bad – a sentence with 6 idioms in it). This they did. P2 saw a much improved Phantoms’ performance, but, due to the heroics of Baston, no goal to show for their efforts. 2-0 the period ended.

And so the metaphorical curtain rose for the final period. And to the worrywart, wet blanket, glass half empty pessimists in the ranks of the Bison backers it was a tense time, as they wallowed in their depressive state of defeatism, impending doom, gloom and despondency. As we know a 2 goal lead can be lost in the blink of an eye. Bison needed to deliver the hockey equivalent of a Mick McManus forearm smash to kill off any revival the Phantoms may have had in mind. This they did 5 minutes into the period. And once again it was Lumberjack Joe Rand, who is supposed to be retired, who delivered the goods. A shot from Greener was saved by Auzins but the puck deflected to the goaltender’s right where Lumberjack Joe was able to pounce on it and tap it in at the back door past the floundering netman. The goal caused the Phantoms faithful to become downhearted, down at heel, down in the mouth and down in the dumps. Their team looked down and out and down on their luck. The aforementioned Bison defeatists were now surely beginning to believe that it was to be their team’s day. Alan "Prairie Dog" Lack was awarded his second assist of the game.

However, it wasn’t all over. The Phantoms piled on the pressure in the latter stages of the game to avoid the ignominy of a shut out defeat. But Bison netman Baston was proving to be an impenetrable force field, an iron curtain and a stone wall all rolled into one. Nothing the Phantoms could do would make him give up a goal. They were becoming as frustrated as a man in the Sahara with a tin of peaches and no tin opener.

Just as a 50 storey skyscraper built without foundations will come crashing down, so the hopes of the Phantoms were similarly doomed and, as the final buzzer sounded, shut out king Baston not quite threw caution to the wind but indeed threw his arms in the air to celebrate an astonishing performance. Bison had finally overcome the Phantoms at the 4^th attempt this season and now it was off to ghostly ice for the following night’s table topping clash.