Thunder Prove Chunderous Not Thunderous

Bison 7 Milton Keynes Thunder 2

4/11/17

For the umpteenth time Planet Ice welcomed a team from Milton Keynes. On this occasion, however, the team were not the Lightning, but instead the Thunder. Their travelling support hoped their team would prove thunderous, rather than chunderous, but the 7-2 scoreline and an outshooting by 38-17 will tell you that it was a lot of the latter and not much at all of the former.

P1 opened (it always does) and General Grant Rounding rang one off the pipes early on. On 7:30 Bison opened the scoring. Kurt “The Scissors” Reynolds passed out of defence to Desperate Dan Davies. He found Tomas Karpov all alone in front of goal. The Czech chap wasn’t toting a six shooter, but he was toting a hot hockey stick (equally as lethal) and he proved he was as deadly a shot as Billy the Kid. He went upstairs and I don’t mean to the bar. 1-0 Bison.

Bison could not make their dominance pay and, worse than that, let their lead slip 5 minutes later. And it was an old Lightning combination that was responsible for the undoing, namely Tom Carlon and Grant McPherson. The latter passed to the former from behind the goal line and the former fired past Dean Skinns from the slot, much to the delight of both the former and the latter and also the heretofore unacknowledged second assistant, Alex Whyte. 1-1

Bison moved up a gear to restore their lead and were granted a power play opportunity on 15:08 when Nidal Phillips sent Tomas Karpov sliding to the ice, the victim of a trip. Was it to be 10 years hard labour on Devil’s Island or in the Siberian salt mines for Phillips? No. Not even a stretch in the Scrubs. The very lenient sentence was 2 minutes in the penalty box. Only 45 seconds was served, however, as Bison capitalised on the 5 on 4 and bagged their second. Fed by Aaron “Billy” Connolly, Desperate Dan Davies fired in a shot from the slot. Tom Annetts saved it but the puck went as loose as a goose in front of the net. The Antonov twins lurked and one of them ruthlessly pounced on the puck with the determination of a rodent control operative chasing a rabid stoat to deliver a fatal blow. He forced the puck in and it was 2-1 Bison.

With only 15 seconds of P1 remaining Bison made it 3-1. Connolly shot, Rounding redirected, Annetts saved and Malinik stabbed the rebound in. Annetts, who had now given up 2 goals from rebounds, was proving a trifle rubberoid.

So ended a very satisfactory period for Bison with the score accurately reflecting the shot count of 13-5. Into P2 we went and we were to see more of the same. A shot count of 17-9 and a goal tally of 3-1. But I jump ahead, dear reader.

P2 was only 1:36 old when Alex Whyte, the heretofore mentioned second assistant to the equalising goal, shamefully hooked back Connolly when he was in on goal and shaping to shoot. Referee Brooks’s crossed arms went up. Was it a penalty shot or was he indicating that he had the X-factor? He may indeed have the latter, but on this occasion he was indicating a penalty shot. Billy picked up the puck centre ice and moved menacingly towards the Annetts minded goal. The Thunder netman may have been considering shooting out his stick like a frog with a long sticky tongue going for an unsuspecting passing fly in order to poke check the puck to safety. However, he didn’t. Connolly closed in and shaped to shoot on the forehand. But it was nothing more than a dastardly deception. Annetts slumped to the ice in butterfly as if he were a collapsing cob wall (see below) and, thus having shot his bolt, which he achieved without a crossbow, was astonished to see Billy drag the puck to his left and slot in off his backhand. 4-1 Bison.

The next goal was greeted with a Vesuvian eruption of approbation. On 22:01 Hallum Wilson forced a turnover and set forth towards the MK goal. It was like poetry in motion. His movement could be likened to a Shakespeare sonnet copied onto the finest writing paper with a Montblanc fountain pen. In contrast the movement of the Thunder D on this occasion was more akin to a shopping list scribbled on the back of an envelope with a leaky biro. Wilson sliced through the lot of them and then passed to Oscar Evans, a mere babe in arms at 16 years old. Oscar fired in low. It was his first goal for Bison. Such a barrage of noise erupted from the crowd that it wouldn’t surprise me if the emergency chemists in Basingstoke had a run on throat gargle later in the evening. And indeed such an eruption occurred not once but twice, namely when the goal was scored and then when the scorer was announced as Oscar Evans. ’eavens above he deserved an Oscar. 5-1 Bison.

The game was now swinging, not low sweet chariot, but away from the Thunder. However, they weathered the storm until 35:20 when they were struck by another lightning bolt to make it a very overcast evening for them. On this occasion it was General Grant Rounding raining on the Thunder parade. Roman Malinik, supplied by Dan Scott, picked Rounding out in the slot and he shot goalwards. We heard a thud. The pad of Annetts had saved the day. But no. The puck continued in a goal-linewards (Ok that’s not a real word) direction and over the line it trickled, indicating that the hapless goaltender was both rubberoid and full of holes. He couldn’t have been happy with that one. He may have said “Oh botheration” or perhaps something stronger, as he absorbed the meaning of the sudden explosion of delectation and jubilation amongst the Bison backers without actually seeing the puck over the goal line. Whatever he said or thought it mattered not a jot. 6-1 Bison. Strangely enough the principal assistant was announced as Malinique (yes you did Bavy), leaving us to wonder whether Bison has a French maid playing for them. Alas no.

2 minutes later it was Dean Skinns’s turn to have an Oooo Betty moment when a shot from an acute angle by Gareth O’Flaherty hit Deano’s pad and sneaked over the line. The assistants were declared as Ross Green and Tom Carlon. 6-2 Bison.

On no further occasion in the period were the goal judges called upon to illuminate their lights nor was Mr. Brooks’s hand required to become flat and pointy in a netwards direction.  So into P3 we moved at 6-2. The 3^rd period was played at a less frantic pace than the other two and we were treated a solitary goal, but what a goal - a blitzkrieg of a move, which must have left the MK players shell shocked and wanting their Mummies. It happened on 50:47. But let us go back a little further in time. In 1508 Michelangelo began painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The finished article is a composition which stretches over 500 square metres of ceiling and contains over 300 figures. At its centre are nine episodes from the Book of Genesis. It is a staggeringly beautiful work of art which took four years to complete. The 7^th Bison goal was a comparable work of art, but there the similarity ends as it took only a few seconds to complete. It was sweeping move executed at lightning speed and with pinpoint accurate passing, as the Thunder D stood as stationary as Lot’s wife. Karpov skated across the face of the goal and passed back to Antonov in the slot. His pass found an unbothered Davies in front of the net. Desperate Dan snapped the puck home. Alas my humble narrative falls well short of conveying the quality of the score, but I can find no purple prose which would do it justice. Never mind. 7-2 Bison.

The game wound down and the final buzzer sounded with the clock showing 00:00. Top Bananas were elected, namely Carlon for Thunder and Malinik (or was it that French maid Malinique) for Bison.