Bison 3 Sheffield Steeldogs 1
24/9/17
This evening saw
Bison entertain the Sheffield Steeldogs in the first game of the Autumn Cup,
not to be confused with the National Cup, which is something completely
different. The Autumn Cup is a cup
competition unsurprisingly played in the Autumn.
What a start the
game had. Some might say it began in a Jumping-Jehosophat-on-a-pogo-stick
manner. In fact I would. From the face off Tomas “Grandmaster” Karpov’s supple
and indeed lissom form nimbly, yet forcefully, surged past the static,
immobile, unmoving and seemingly indolent, not to mention comparatively
sedentary formation that was the opposition defense, whose representatives
could be forgiven, especially by the Bison backers, for doing nothing other than
admire the aesthetics of Karpov’s footwork and exquisite movement,
agility, acceleration and scoring end result. Eh? OK to put it another way he
won the face off, advanced down the centre without a challenge and then rifled a
wrist shot towards Brandon Stones in the Dogs’ net. They say Rolling Stones
gather no moss. In this case there was no moss, but there was a puck and also a
Stones. Alas for the travelling Dogs’ fans, Stones failed to gather the puck.
On went Honest Pete’s goal light and it was 1-0 Bison. Only 7 seconds had been
played.
Could Bison
continue scoring at this rate? Had they done so it would have been 171-0 by the
end of the 1st period. However, they couldn’t and it wasn’t. In fact
the period ended with that solitary goal separating the teams. The additional
170 goals the Bison backers were expecting didn’t materialise. However, there
was nearly a second score before the first minute had elapsed – only 17 seconds
after the goal, in fact. A shot from the Antonov twins was deflected in out of
the air by Karpov. “Your stick was above bar height,” said Mr. Matthews and the
goal was expunged as if it had never existed, which, according to the game
sheet, it hadn’t. 1-0 Bison it remained, luckily for Stones, who, by now, must
have felt like he was stoned.
Then it was the
Dogs’ turn to score a phantom goal. I can’t tell you what happened or who was
involved as it was a bit of a mêlée in front of the net, but the goal light
definitely came on and then went off. Much to the relief of the Bison backers
and the chagrin of the Dogs’ faithful, Referee Matthews’s hand didn’t become
flat and pointy in a netwards direction and play continued. Shortly after that the
period ended. The P1 shot count was announced as 17-2 in Bison’s favour. Had the Dogs’
goal, which wasn’t a goal, instead been a goal it would have been 1-1 and a
travesty on the balance of play. In fact, Jesse James and his gang could not
have undertaken a more audacious robbery (see below for a splendid illustration
of the James gang’s raid in Northfield 1876 – it went hideously wrong by the way). 1-0 it remained at the buzzer.
Bison needed to
make their superiority count or the Dogs would be in with a shout. This they
did within a couple of minutes of the start of P2. On 22:18 Ashley Calvert was
called for slashing and condemned to a 2 minute stretch of solitary without
even bread and water (actually there may have been some water available). Well
it should have been 2 minutes, but only 14 seconds into the power play Bison
scored. According to the B52s, on Planet Claire the trees are red, the air is
pink and no-one has a head. I’m not sure about the trees and air at Planet Ice,
but the members of the Dogs’ D also had no heads or, if they did, they clearly
weren’t using them. They were caught out by an Antonov across the crease pass
to Aaron “Billy” Connolly at the back door. He slapped the puck home past a
hapless Stones, whose brother Rolling would not have been impressed. 2-0 Bison.
On 28:12 Bison
made the scoreline a trifle more representative of their dominance. Stuart “The
Cat” Mogg and Ryan Sutton combined to send the Bouncing Czech, Jaroslav Cesky
on his way. Jaro skated forward and unleashed an unstoppable wrist shot. Well
it may have been stoppable, but not by Stones. In 1957 Larry Williams sang
about his girlfriend Bony Maronie. He wanted to make love to her under the
apple tree – surely this would have constituted an outrage to public decency,
but never mind. Mr. Williams also told us that the aforementioned lady was “as
skinny as a stick of macaroni”. The Dogs may just as well have had Bony Maronie
in goal rather than Brandon Stones. Size mattered not a jot as the puck sailed
past the hapless netman’s blocker and into the net. This occurrence must have made
Stones adopted feelings of funereal perturbation - this was the second time he
had been unable to stop an unstoppable whipped wrist shot in the game. 3-0
Bison.
Shortly after
Cesky rang the pipes but, on this occasion, Stones had a fortuitous escape as
the puck went to safety. Not long later Cesky fired one off Stones’s mask. Had
it not been for Jacques Plante, Stones would have ended up looking like a
character from a Sam Peckinpah film. Jacques who? See footnote.
That was it.
There was no more scoring in P2 and Bison went in with a comfortable lead. It
has to be said that the Dogs had proved woefully in adequate on the attacking
front. Dean Skinns had had to keep out only 7 shots in the first 2 periods. A
Dogs’ comeback in P3 seemed as unlikely as Robbie Coltrane riding a penny
farthing to victory in the Tour de France (believe it or not they did used to
race them – see below). However, we did not see more of the same in P3. The
period belonged to the Dogs, mainly because they spent 6 minutes of the period
on the power play and had not a power play to defend themselves. Bison were
called for no fewer than 4 minors and a 10 misconduct on Elliott Dewey on
56:15. To attract a penalty of this type Dewey, called for a delay of game
penalty as a result of his scooping not an ice cream but the puck over the
glass, uttered words which cannot be reproduced in a report of this type in for
fear of perpetrating an outrage to public decency. Actually they could be
because I have no editorial control. However, modesty prevents me from
reporting his actual words, notwithstanding that I don’t know what they were.
However, Mr Matthews clearly regarded them as offensive as the utterances of an
angry fishwife and off to the box went Dewey.
However, as
usual, I jump ahead, dear reader. Let us return to the 45th minute.
Cesky was called for a delayed penalty for hooking. Stones saw his chance. He
raced full tilt from his net to allow a 6th skater to take the ice. I
would like to say that he possessed the sure footedness of an Alpine goat, but
I can’t because he didn’t on this occasion. In fact, he fell over. Never mind,
he eventually made it to the bench and on came the extra man. It paid off for
the Dogs as Ashley Calvert, set up by Adrian Palak and Lewis Bell outdeked Dean
Skinns and slotted home. 3-1 Bison.
All to play for
with 15 minutes remaining. However, as the clock ticked down, the Dogs were
making no impression on Bison. There was much grinding in the corners on Bison
power play kills and a few near misses which had the crowd oooing and ahing.
But the Dogs could find no way past Skinns. Suddenly, as the game passed into
the last minute, an anguished cry went up from Block C. “For God’s sake, pull
your goaltender.” The Che Guevara impersonator wanted the excitement of an
empty net, but he didn’t get it. Stones remained planted in his net. The final
buzzer sounded and Bison had won the game. The election of Top Bananas concluded
the proceedings. Kurt “The Scissors” Reynolds was Bison’s and netman Brandon
Stones was the Dogs’, which made him the third visiting goaltender in a row to
pick up the award. We long for the visit of a team with a dodgy keeper.
Footnote : On November 1st 1959 Jaques
Plante, the Montreal Canadiens’ goaltender, was hit in the face by a puck, which broke his nose, in a game with the New York Rangers. He got patched up and
returned to the ice wearing a facemask. It was the first time this had been
done in an NHL game.
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