Ooo Betty!

Bison 1 Telford Tigers 4

9/9/16

The 2016-17 season opened with the clash of the last two EPL champions. The Tigers were looking to stop a run of 4 successive flagellations at Planet Ice. With a 4-1 win they kicked off their season in fine fettle and must have high hopes of improving significantly on their under achievement last season, which brought no trophies and only a 4^th place finish in the EPL. As for Bison, it was an Ooo Betty night. They will have many easier games this season and hey! there are another 53 games to go.

On 4:30 the Tigers took the lead. A raking diagonal pass out of defence by Jonathon Weaver found Michal Satek on the right wing. He moved forward and centred for an incoming Matt Davies to outmuscle the Bison D-man and bundle the puck over the line. 1-0 Tigers.

The travelling Tigers supporters enjoyed 7 minutes of joy as their team held on to their lead. However, that all changed on the stroke of 12 minutes. A sonorous blast emanated from Ref Matthews’s whistle. He held up 4 fingers and 2 thumbs. Too many men on the ice was the call. Perhaps one of them had been Greg Clarkson who is so colossal he looks like 2 men. Into the box went someone or other to serve the bench minor. 33 seconds later Bison had levelled it. An attempted clearance out of defence was deflected into the air by Petr Polodna. The puck was then batted down to the ice by Declan “Barrack-O” Balmer. He slewed a cross ice pass to Long Ciaron Long, who shaped to shoot, didn’t, then did. The puck flew across the goaltender and in top shelf. Had Geoffrey Chaucer been present and a Bison fan he might have announced to those around him - “Mi herrt ys full of joye. Good and gentil folke of Olde Basing - if ye be on twytter, I do invyte yow to poost the excitinge newes wyth a hashtagge and tell of yower fayre and mirthful celebracion wyth the manye folke of yower hockye familye”. It was 1-1.

Bison were, however, unable to break through further and, as the period drew to a conclusion, it was the Tigers who took control of the game and scored a couple of goals, which propelled them into an impressive lead and a dominating position. First on 17:04 former Bison Sam Zajac found Matt Davies who centred for Satek to score. 2-1 Tigers. Then, with Jake “the Peg” Bartoň on the naughty boys’ step for tripping, the Tigers bagged their third. Zajac passed to Satek, newly signed from the Manchester Phoenix, for whom he poached a plethora of points last season. Satek set up Rick Plant just inside the blue line. Plant planted the puck in the net with a long range wrist shot. One can only assume that Bison goaltender Tomas Hiadlovsky was screened as the puck sailed in from a long way out. Amongst the Bison crowd some shouted “Holy cow!” Others “Holy makerel!” Others still “Holy Guacamole!” The tigers were taking a 3-1 lead into the interval.

It had been a chunderous period for the home team. Although outshot by only 6-9 the period had been much more one sided that that suggests. Bison had been second best in all aspects. They had to do three things in P2. Firstly, they had to shut down Satek, who was on 1+2. Secondly, they had to tighten up their D work. Thirdly, they had to get men in front of the net to sweep up the gift wrapped opportunities which were being present in the form of rebounding rubber off Tigers’ netman, Ondrej Raszka. As it proved they achieved the first two, but not the third, as I shall relate, dear reader.

We saw a much improved Bison in the 2^nd, but, much to the chagrin of the Bison backers, the Tigers’ goal was proving as impregnable as a trench on the Somme, protected by barbed wire entanglements with machine guns and artillery respectively raking and bombarding no-mans-land in front of it. Bison failed to breach their defences and had to rely on a massive hit by Petr Polodna on Dan Scott, which threatened to bring down the building (that wouldn’t have been difficult), as the highlight of the period.  Luckily for Scott, he is seemingly of robust bodily construction as he was able to absorb the titanic force of Polodna’s body check, albeit with a degree of discomfort I am sure. However he clearly didn’t like the hit, which was perfectly legal, and moments later assaulted Polodna in a fashion perfectly illegal and ended up having his collar felt. But Bison could not take advantage of the 5 on 4.

As the period drew to a close with a frustrated Bison unable to break through, the Tigers hammered another nail into their coffin with their 4^th goal. On 38:01 Warren Tait and Phil Hill combined to set up Macauley Haywood for a shot. Hiadlovsky blocked his first effort, but the puck went straight back to Heywood who put it in from a very tight angle. 4-1 Tigers and hats off to them. That was only their 13^th shot on goal and they had bagged 4 goals.

P3 was played out in much the same way as P2 with Bison pressing, but falling short and goaltender Raszka giving up rubber. Late in the period Antonov’s shot was saved by the Czeck goalie chap, but the puck spilled out in front of the goal. Screws can be loose, cannons can be loose and, I am told, women can be loose. In this case it was the puck which was loose. Loose as a goose in fact. But Bison could not put it through the pipes. Moments later another shot was blocked by Raszka. The puck dropped to the ice in front of the crease as before and a mêlée of enormous, gargantuan, colossal, stupendous, gigantic and brobdingnagian (yes that is a real word) proportions developed. Once again the Tigers’ defence managed to eventually clear it and the scoreboard remained at 1-4.

Sad to relate the highlight of the period for the Bison backers was not a goal, but another incident, this time an unseemly altercation of the most opprobrious variety. Balmer and Heywood came together after the former had punched or pushed the latter (opinions varied). The blood lust of the crowd must have come from watching too many films of the calibre of “Django Unchained”, “The Wild Bunch” and “Cannibal Holocaust”. There was much whoopin’ and a hollerin’ from the crowd, but, alas, their insatiable craving for violence remained unfulfilled as in steamed the officials and doled out penalties to the would be pugilists without a meaty punch being thrown.

The final buzzer sounded as the clock ticked away to 0:00 remaining in the period and Bison backers were left to muse over their heaviest home ice defeat for quite some time. Never mind. It’s a long season and one swallow does not make a summer. The election of the Top Bananas is all that remained. The award of boxes of beers to Satek for the Tigers and Bison’s General Grant Rounding rounded off the proceedings.