Heist of the century!

Bison 3 Peterborough Phantoms 4 (shoot out)

24/9/16

Have you ever heard of Roy James, Charlie Wilson and Gordon Goody? Probably not. But you may have heard of Bruce Reynolds, Ronnie Biggs and Buster Edwards. Six of the Great Train Robbers of course. Back in 1963, long before plastic fivers were ever thought of, they pulled off one of the greatest heists in criminal history when they stopped and robbed a Royal Mail train and made off with £2.6m (equivalent to £50m today which equates to 10,000,000 plastic fivers). Well last night we saw an audacious heist of similar proportions as the Phantoms, outplayed and considerably outshot (39-15 actually), made off with the win after an eventful penalty shoot out, which included a fight (yes you are reading that correctly). It may not have been a criminal heist, but it certainly was a hockey heist.

Bison started badly and found themselves 1-0 to the bad on 1:25. From a face off they failed to clear the puck from in front of goal. Petr Stepanek squeezed off a shot, which Tomas Hiadlovsky saved. Alas for him, the puck bobbled into the path of Martins Susters who tapped it in. Will Weldon with the second assist. Martins Susters? I always have a problem with players with “S”s on the ends of their names. How many of them are there? One, two or four?

If that had been a lucky goal for the visitors an even luckier one would put them 2-0 up in the 8^th minute. Weldon scored from behind the goal as his speculative pass forwards (or backwards to look at it another way) hit Hiadlovsky and went in. It was a disaster for the hapless netminder. Not so much an “Ooo Matron” moment, but more an “Ooo Betty” one. The attempt to score may have been intentional, but probably wasn’t. Stepanek, later to attain infamy as one of the shoot out pugilists, was awarded an assist for the goal.

There was no more scoring in P1 and the interval buzzer sounded with the Phantoms enjoying a commanding lead they did not deserve. Do I hear Phantoms fans saying the words “grapes” and “sour”? Let them doubt my impartiality, if they wish (OK I’m not impartial at all – everyone knows that), but let’s look at the facts. For 20 minutes Bison had given as good as they had got, they had outshot the Phantoms by 8-6, but had nothing to show for their efforts, while the visitors had scored twice from only 6 on target shots and both had been scored with slices of good fortune. Sour grapes? If you like.

What we witnessed in the interval was pure farce. Far be it from me to offer an opinion as I have never driven a Zamboni or resurfaced an ice pad. Neither can I skate or even report accurately on a hockey game (if you’re one of my regular readers you’ll know that already). However …. the Zamboni trundled around the pad belching out what must have been thousands of gallons of water onto the ice. The end result was a swimming pool, which would have been fine if you had had Michael Phelps, Tom Daley and Ellie Simmonds in your team, but none of those were present. The Zamboni returned to hoover up the excess water as an avalanche of appropriate music including “Cry me a River” and “Aqua Marina” (she was Troy Tempest’s squeeze in Stingray – remember?) blared from the tannoy. Bavi you are like Brian – a very naughty boy.

Well things could only get better we thought. And indeed they did but also didn’t. Bison completely, utterly and comprehensively, not to mention thoroughly, unanimously and without fear of contradiction dominated the 2^nd period, running the Phantoms ragged and outshooting them by 15-4. It must have been a ghastly experience for the ghostly visitors. The “didn’t” part of things getting better came when the end of period buzzer sounded and the deficit was still 2 goals. How on earth? Read on, dear reader, and I shall relate how a cracking goal wiped out all Bison’s valiant efforts.

Bison took up the gauntlet immediately and continued to hammer into their opponents. But the Phantoms’ net held out. Bison were in danger of becoming as frustrated as a grandad, who hasn’t eaten for a week, finding himself sitting in front of a big, fat, juicy steak, but unable to locate his dentures. Surely it was only a matter of time before the homesters scored. And indeed it was, but they had to wait until the 31^st minute before they finally found a way past Janis Auzins, a man who enjoys a similar degree of popularity at Basingstoke as Scott Spearing. Craig Wallis was called for tripping. “It’s a spell of chokey for you me old china,” or words to that effect were uttered by referee Brooks and off to the penal institute went the miscreant without his dog Grommitt. Just over a minute later Bison made the man advantage count when a pass from Long Ciaron Long or Declan “Barrack-O” Balmer (I am not sure which, but they were both credited with assists) found René Jarolin at the hash marks. He raised his stick and fired in a clapper. The puck slammed into the net with the speed a Big Mac disappearing down the gullet of a cholesterophile gourmand, who, like the dentureless grandad mentioned above, hadn’t eaten for a week. At last a Bison goal. 1-2.

A minute later it was the Phantoms’ turn to go on a 5 on 4. Shaun “The Sheep” Thompson went from last week’s hat-trick hero to a slashing villain and was ordered to the house of correction. 22 seconds into the powerplay and it was back to a 2 goal advantage for the Phantoms. Set up by Marc Levers and James Ferrara, Stepanek hammered in a slap shot via the goal frame from just inside the blue line. The goal was a tragedy, not a Shakespearean tragedy or even Greek tragedy, but a hockey tragedy for Bison, but you had to admire the ferocity of the shot. 1-3.

There were no more goals in P2 and Bison went into the interval with a shots advantage of 23-10 over the 2 periods, but an all that mattered goals deficit of 1-3. They had to continue their all out assault on the Auzins net in P3 if they were going to get anything out of the game and this they did. Reward arrived early. On 41:26 Balmer and Karpov combined to set up Antonov. Was it Ivan or Vanya? I am not sure. But whichever one it was he trapped the puck, swivelled and fired the puck into the top corner of the net. It was a superb finish. The goal was greeted by an explosion of noise from the Bison blocks. Whoops were whooped and hollers hollered. Shouts of “that’s one in the eye for you Phantoms”, “dashed fine shot, old bean” and “Holy guacamole” were heard.

Bison were now very much in the ascendancy. The level of intensity they displayed in P2 was kept up and it finally paid dividends on 53:48. Antonov proved you don’t have to be big to be effective as he won the puck in a physical tussle on the boards and slipped it inside to Tomas “Grandmaster” Karpov, who took the puck forward and found himself with only Auzins to beat. This was not the moment to dither, dilly-dally or descend into a state of indecision and indecisiveness. Karpov had to flummox Auzins. He had to be as sharp as a pencil and as cool as a cucumber. He went 5-hole. We heard a thud. Oh dear Auzins had blocked it. But no the puck had hit his pad, passed through the said 5-hole and then slowly pea rolled over the line. 3-3.

Bison continued to press forward for a winner with the Phantoms looking happy just to hang on. This the visitors did and so into overtime we passed. Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird had been called for a penalty with 22 seconds of regulation time remaining so we found Bison defending a 4 on 3 for the first 1:38 of overtime. There were no goals in overtime and, in fact barely a shot – Bison had one on target and the Phantoms none. So onto the dreaded lottery of a penalty shoot out we passed. With 2 successful shots (Padelek and Levers) to Bison’s 1 (Polodna) the Phantoms won it. However, the highlight, although I feel it somewhat inappropriate to describe it as such, was an unseemly altercation of the most opprobrious variety as Stepanek, having had his shot saved by Hiadlovsky, argued about it and then assaulted the goaltender in a display of the worst kind of bad sportsmanship you could imagine. Blistering Biriyanis! Long Ciaron Long left the bench and laid into the chuntering Czech chap and a fight ensued. The consequence was 28 penalty minutes to Long 29 to Stepanek.

Levers’s winning penalty shot brought an end to the evening’s proceedings. Weldon and Karpov were elected Top Bananas for their respective teams. Bison had to be content with a solitary point from a game they deserved to win comfortably. But such is hockey. The Great Train robbers would have been impressed.