Phantoms Fail to Scare

Bison 5 Peterborough Phantoms 0

2/9/17

No-one expected this game to be like mugging a pensioner, shooting an unarmed man or stealing a sheet of music from Stevie Wonder. However, that’s what it turned out to be, as the Phantoms, supposedly one of the 2 or 3 top teams in the new league, came to Planet Ice and failed to scare anyone. They can only get better. As for Bison it was a very satisfactory season’s opener.

The first incident of note in the game was a match penalty dished out to Vanya Antonov for a high stick into the face of James White just before the 5 minute mark. Although he wasn’t bled white, White did bleed and, as corpuscular material was involved, off to the locker room went Antonov. Not to worry his twin Ivan was still in the game. However it did mean that Bison would have to defend a 5 minute power play. Or rather they didn’t because the Phantoms copped not one but two 2 minute minors during those 5 minutes. Firstly, Nathan Salem had his collar felt for interference and then someone else (I know not whom because of the broken public address system) went down the steps for a high stick. So a 5 minute power play was thrown away in much the same way that a Cornish tin miner would throw away the crust of his pasty. (Eh? See footnote).

Bison continued to press and took the lead on 10:15. Desperate Dan Davies started the move with a charge up the right wing. He hammered forward with electric pace, the arena lights glinting off his skate blades like the sun’s rays off ……something shiny. He passed inside to Ryan Sutton, whose shot was stopped by goaltender Adam Long. Alas for the Phantoms, Long could only spill the puck like a hot potato. Perhaps he thought it was a hot potato. Whatever he though it didn’t matter because there was Bison skipper Aaron “Billy” Connolly to smash home the rebounded rubber. 1-0 Bison.

There was no more scoring in P1, but Bison surged ahead with a zim-zam-zaramango second period. 4 unanswered goals was their haul. The first came on 21:08. I am fortunate to be able to write about the goal as I had a half eaten pizza on my lap at the time and, whilst trying to balance that and scribble notes, my biro ran out (thanks Mystic Jo for supplying a substitute writing implement). What would Lewis Edson Waterman have thought? (Who? Waterman invented the fountain pen in 1883). Anyway back to the goal. A turnover (not an apple one) on the blue line saw Connolly race away with Jaroslav Cesky, the bouncing Czech, in support. The puck sizzled across the ice like an egg on a hot griddle from Connolly’s stick to Cesky’s. Jaro deked the goaltender and then slid a backhander towards the goal. The puck sizzled across the line like another egg on a hot griddle past the hapless goaltender. 2-0 Bison.

On 24:44 it was 3-0 as a consequence of chunderous defending by the Phantoms. And it was a goal made by Tomas “Grandmaster” Karpov, who picked up an assist, although it was really worth two. He hammered the puck forward and then chased after it, barrelling forward in a velocious manner. How velocious? Well he couldn’t have moved faster if he were doing a runner from a restaurant without paying the bill. Blistering biriyanis! He seized the puck and worked his way around the boards, all the time holding off Phantoms’ D-man Greg Pick. Suddenly Karpov unleashed a stick blade tape pass to General Grant Rounding in front of goal without a Phantom to challenge him. Had there been any members of the aristocracy present, they might have described the Phantoms’ defending as “perfectly beastly” because, from the visitors’ perspective, that was what it was. The unchallenged Rounding rounded off the move with a deke and backhander across the line. 3-0 Bison.

7 minutes later it was 4-0. Leigh Jamieson shamelessly hooked Ryan Sutton and the game was stopped by a shrill blast from Referee Bellfit’s Acme Thunderer. The Bison crowd were thinking that 10 years in the Siberian salts mines would have been an appropriate sentence, for such blatant rule bending, but Mr. Bellfitt was not empowered to impose such a sentence and Jamieson copped the much more lenient sentence of 2 minutes in the slammer. His misdemeanour cost his team another goal, as I shall relate, dear reader.

Bison controlled play and eventually caught the Phantoms defense with their flies undone. The scorer was Dan Scott. A cross ice pass from Davies found Scott as the man over. As the puck arrived, Scott’s stick was high in the air and coming down to execute a one timer clapper. The stick hit the ice just behind the puck, bent and restraightened (OK I couldn’t actually see that from Row F), sending the rubber disk flying high over the goaltender’s shoulder. Gloom, doom and despondency engulfed the consciousness of the visiting fans as their Bison counterparts exploded into a show of near orgasmic ecstasy, which looked likely to elevate them to a new level of spiritual contentment, namely Nirvana - the state of mind which is achieved after a long process of committed application to the path of purification in case you didn’t know. Never mind all that. It was 4-0 Bison.

Not content with a mere 4 goal lead, Bison scored another on 34:35, sending their fans beyond Nirvana. Davies dallied with the puck faced by a wall of 3 D-men. He tried to spear a pass to the back door where an unmarked Cesky lurked like a shady black marketeer. The puck never got there, but was deflected away by one of the D-men. Alas for him and all in the Phantoms camp, the puck went straight to Pol Pot, who has jacked in his job as genocidal leader of the Khmer Rouge and is now playing hockey in Basingstoke, and he put it past Long. 5-0 Bison (Ok it wasn’t Pol Pot – it was Paul Petts).

That was it. No more scoring in P2. P2 ended. P3 opened. There were no more goals. P3 ended. Dean Skinns had his shutout. Enough said. Top bananas were Aaron “Billy” Connolly for Bison and Scott Robson for the Phantoms.

Footnote : The Cornish pasty is believed to have been invented by the wives of Cornish tin miners back in the 18th century. It was not practical for miners to return to the surface to eat their lunch and, of course, there were no ablutionary facilities below ground, so they used to take pasties to eat for lunch. The idea was that you would hold the pasty by its crust, eat the bit in the middle and then throw the crust away. That way they could eat the pasty with dirty hands, which, of course, may have had traces of arsenic on them. After all where there’s tin, there’s arsenic. Everyone knows that.