Bison 3
Swindon Wildcats 2
26/12/16
Stuffed with turkey, Christmas pud and other
festive culinary delights and with “Good King Wenceslas” on their lips, the
Bison backers trudged through the snow to give cheer to their hockey heroes as
they took on the Wildcats from Swindon. (OK there wasn’t any snow and I didn’t
hear anyone singing, but no-one reads my reports expecting accuracy do they?)
Christmas is supposed to be the season of goodwill to all men isn’t it? The
scene of the most opprobrious violence you could imagine that we saw at the end
of the game suggested that the “goodwill” part of that saying had been left
behind somewhere. But I jump ahead, dear reader. There is much hockey stuff to
relate – thrills, spills, goals, near misses, robust challenges and officiating
of the highest calibre (OK that last bit might be a bit of artistic license as
well). Let us return to the start of the game.
Bison took the lead just before the chimes of the
7th minute mark. Solid forechecking from René Jarolin forced an
error and the puck was turned over to Stuart “The Cat” Mogg just inside the
blue line. He skated forward and unleashed a shot/pass which found Antonov, who
swept it in. Which Antonov? Whether it was Vanya or Ivan I cannot say.
Fortunately their brother Ilya doesn’t play for Bison or it would be even more
confusing. 1-0 Bison.
Bison thought they had taken a 2-0 lead shortly
after. A shot from Long was engulfed by Stevie Lyle like an amoeba ingesting a
food particle. He then slid across the line and into the net with the puck
remaining concealed about his person. The goal light remained unilluminated,
but Long’s long arms were raised aloft and he executed a victory jump into the
plexi. An officials/goal judge discussion ensued. Was it a good goal? The Bison
players and supporters said “YES!” But the referee said “NO!” so the opinion of
the former mattered not a jot. No-one had actually seen the puck cross the line
as it was hidden from view. In those circumstances a goal cannot be given and
on this occasion wasn’t. It was dashed hard cheddar for Bison. 1-0 it remained.
The first period ended. The second period began.
The second period ended. Enough said. OK I’ll say a little. It was a most frustrating
20 minutes with stray passes, wayward shooting, no goals and not much else.
We moved into
the final period all hoping for a better period than the second and we got one.
Bison seemed to have shaken off the lack lustre of P2 and were going for the
jugular. However, it would be the Cats who would level it on 46:11. Phil Hill,
not the American racing driver of the same name, who won the Formula 1
championship in 1961, but the other one, slewed a cross ice pass where Jan
Kostal was skating in unopposed. Bobby Hull, one of the all time great stars of
the NHL, is credited with inventing the slapshot. He was also bald and wore a
hairpiece on the ice. “Oh balderdash”, I hear you cry, “that’s made up”. Well
no – see footnote. Anyway had Bobby Hull been present last night he would have
been impressed with the way Kostal despatched the puck past Tomas Hiadlovsky in
the Bison net by way of a clapper. 1-1.
Ooo
Betty. This was not a good moment for Bison. Although they had had the better
of the period and seemed to have stepped up the necessary gear to win the game,
they now found themselves on level terms and in danger of letting everything
slip like Bobby Hull’s hairpiece. They needed a goal and pretty damned quick. And
they got one only a couple of minutes later. The puck was cycled round and
round until finally Rabbits’ Foot Joe Baird was set up by Kurt “The Scissors”
Reynolds with an opportunity of a long range shot. He hammered the puck
goalwards by way of a Bobby Hull clapper. Lurking in front of the crease was
Dangerous Derek Roehl and he thrust his twig into the path of the puck and
redirected it low past Lyle and just inside the post. Imagine you are Leo Tolstoy. You
have just finished writing “War and Peace” on your laptop – all 587,287 words
of it. You go away to make a cup of tea. When you come back your laptop has
crashed and you realise you’ve forgotten to save your work. You would be
unhappy. Bison’s go ahead goal must have propelled the Cats’ faithful into a
state of mind similarly lacking in joy and contentment. 2-1 Bison.
And the Tolstoy-esque imaginary scenario
disappointment didn’t end there for the travelling supporters as 2 minutes
later it was 3-1. Now if you were to Google “Top Ten Geniuses of all time” you
might find Einstein, Mozart, Shakespeare and da Vinci on that list. You
wouldn’t find the name of Tomas Karpov. However what we saw him do on 51:34 was
a piece of hockey genius. Taking a feed from Declan “Barrack-O” Balmer, Antonov
set Karpov away behind the net. He emerged well wide of the goal and shaped to
deliver a centring pass, which is what Lyle was expecting. In “Waltzing
Matilda” a jumbuck (sheep), who comes to drink at a billabong, is taken by
surprise by a jolly swagman who grabs him and stuffs him in his tucker bag.
What happened couldn’t have surprised Lyle more if Karpov had grabbed him and
stuffed him into a tucker bag. For at that precise moment, suddenly and without
warning, Karpov whipped a wrist shot over Lyle’s shoulder and into the net short
side from an acute angle. It was an astonishing piece of quick thinking
combined with letterbox marksmanship. The only words I can think of to describe
the moment would be “By jingo. What an absolutely spiffing score. Well done,
old bean”. 3-1 Bison.
Bison were now in a comfortable position and just
needed to see the game out. The minutes passed without the Cats being able to
make any impression at the fag end of the game. And finally there came a time
for the Cats to throw caution to the wind, as opposed to the towel in. Matt Towlaski
was called for roughing and even before his seat in the house of correction was
warm, the Cats called a time out. Lyle was dragged from the net and the teams
plunged into a period of 2 minutes of 6 on 4. There were some hair raising
moments for the Cats (sorry I didn’t mean to make oblique reference to Bobby
Hull’s hairpiece again) with Jarolin’s empty net opportunity blocked and then
Long Ciaron Long’s long backhanded chance from inside his own defensive zone
going wide. But the Cats survived and with only 5 seconds of the penalty
remaining the audacious move paid off. Set up by Maxim Birbraer and Jonas Höög
(a man with more than his fair share of umlauts), young D-man Ben Nethersell
proved he was no ne’er-do-well as he hammered the puck in off Hiadlovsky’s pad.
3-2 with 16 seconds left to play. Could the Cats pull off an unlikely recovery?
Well actually no they couldn’t. The final buzzer sounded and it was Bison who
had bagged the win.
But the
excitement didn’t end there. Oh no. An ignominious conflict of gargantuan
proportions broke out in the handshake line. Who knows how these things start,
but the only penalties doled out were to Kurt Reynolds and Jordan Kelsall, so I
would imagine it must have been those two who kicked everything off by failing
to find common ground in their discussion, just as surely as John D.
Rockefeller and Mao Tse Tung would have struggled to achieve a consensus of
opinion when discussing the merits of capitalism. The highlight of the said
brawl came when the diminutively statured and dietrally challenged linesman
Justin Lalonde was seen dragging two Cats players to the bench door to prevent
their further involvement in the unseemly fracas. It was the corpulent
official’s finest hour, but one which carried much comedic value. Top marks to
Mr. Lalonde, however.
Eventually
everything simmered down like, just as would an overheated pan of goat and
mushroom stroganoff when you turn off the gas. Top Bananas were elected and
they turned out to be Phil Hill for the Cats and Long Ciaron Long for Bison.
Footnote : While playing for the Winnipeg Jets in
the WHA Bobby Hull got into a fight with none other than Slapshot’s famed Dave
Hansen, who was actually a real hockey player not an actor. Hansen was shocked
to suddenly find Hull’s hairpiece in his hand and disdainfully threw it to the
ice. The headline in the paper the next day was “Is Nothing Sacred?”
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