Bison Walk Through Walls as Ghostly Opponents Exorcised

Bison 6 Peterborough Phantoms 2

9/12/17

The crowds flocked to Planet Ice last night to witness the final game in the qualifying stages of the Autumn Cup. After last week’s dire home defeat against the Streatham Redhawks and with Bison short benched yet again (no Baird, Antonov, Smith or Malinik available), it might have looked like a forgone conclusion. However, every team is capable of a dire performance and the Phantoms are no exception. Maybe not outplayed, but they certainly were outgoaltendered (does such a word exist?) with Euan King, their hapless netman, recording a chunderous save percentage of 0.75 (OK that’s really a decimal isn’t it), whilst Dean Skinns at the other end stopped 92.86% of the shots fired at him. The end result was a sound spanking for the Phantoms.

P1 opened with the clock at 20:00, as it always does. To say that the crowd were treated to a pulsating period populated with a proliferation of praiseworthy plays and pleasurable purpleness would be a good example of alliteration, but alas a deviation from the truth of what actually happened. And so we will dwell no further on the first 20 minutes of play, but will instead pass on to the second epoch, one which yielded a far superior level of entertainment for the assembled, not to mention 5 goals.

The deadlock was finally broken on 21:24 when Bison snatched the lead. Desperate Dan Davies won a face off. The puck squirted to Ryan Sutton, whose pass found Desperate Dan Scott all alone in the slot. The Phantoms’ defending on this occasion was sluggardly and chunderous. I wish I could throw some light on the why the defending was thus, but alas I have no light to throw on the matter nor indeed have I anything else to throw. Who cares? All we need to know at this juncture is that Scott skated forward and rifled a wrist shot past King glove side. After a turgid 1^st period and following on from that hideous non-scoring performance against Streatham last week, the scoring of the goal cause the Bison backers to erupt like a load of steam squirting out of the valve of a pressure cooker. 1-0 Bison.

On 28:16 it was 2-0. Nathan Pollard was about to have his freedom pollarded after a slash. Up went Refereee Matthews’s hand and away from his net went Dean Skinns. He steamed towards the bench in a most steamy fashion to allow a 6^th skater to take to the ice. Within the blink of an eye Bison scored. Aaron “Billy” Connolly received a pass from Kurt “The Scissors” Reynolds and hammered the puck in off the crossbar. Goaltender King was bitterly disappointed and sank back into his net in what seemed to be the foetal position. Was he indicating that he wanted his mummy to assuage his disappointment who knows? Mrs. King did not appear. 2-0 Bison and, as for Pollard, he remained unpollarded.

Cruising at 2-0 and playing some exciting hockey, Bison were flying as high as one of Noel Gallagher’s birds. It could only get better surely. Well no, matron. Bison pressed the self destruct button. In 1961 Viv Nicholson and her husband won today’s equivalent of £3m on the football pools. She famously vowed to “spend, spend, spend”. She did just that and blew the lot in a very short space of time. In a similar vein Bison blew their lead, albeit in a much shorter period of time - 2 minutes to be precise. The 1^st Phantoms goal occurred on 30:53 and came from a giveaway (the culprit will remain unidentified here to spare his blushes). Suffice it to say that said giveaway gave a 2 on 1 to the ghostly visitors. Leigh Jamieson didn’t need his partner, however, but instead rifled a wrist shot past Dean Skinns. 2-1 Bison.

Then things became even worse. Bison backers’ expectations rose when Will Weldon was called for a trip on 31:32. “Up the river you go, matey,” said Referee Matthews and off to the box went a (I am sure) repentant Weldon. Could his team defend the 5 on 4? Well yes they could and, better still for the apparitional icemen, they bagged a short handed goal on 32:41. Robert Ferrara set up Darius Pliskauskas and he whipped in a wrist shot from the slot to return the game to parity. Ooo Betty. 2-2.

The game continued to ebb and flow and on 36:31 Bison retook the lead. I am not quite sure what happened. I saw Stuart “The Cat” Mogg send in a speculative shot from just inside the blue line. It seemed to be heading straight for goaltender King’s chest. Alas my line of vision was blocked. Suddenly Bison arms were thrown skywards, the goal light was on and Mr. Matthews’s flat netwardsly pointing hand made an appearance. The scorer was announced as Ryan Sutton and the first assistant as Connolly. A shot, a save, a tip in, a scramble? Who knows? Not I. Who cares? All that mattered was that it was 3-2 Bison and that is how the teams returned to the locker room minutes later as the buzzer blared forth to indicate an end to P2 hostilities.

P3 opened and on 43:13 King’s failure to freeze the puck in his crease led to a scene of abject insanity in front of the Phantoms’ net. The puck was as loose as a goose and it seemed like one big mad house with a bunch of deranged lunatics maniacally stabbing at the puck in a frantic and frenzied manner. Eventually General Grant Rounding forced it over the line, an occurrence which was greeted by an illuminated goal light, a flat pointy referee’s hand and Bison players’ arms raised aloft. Now it was the Bison crowd’s turn to lose their marbles as they instantly turned into a delirious mob of unhinged madmen (and women), wildly cheering and waving their arms in the air as if sanity had deserted them. 4-2 Bison. Assists to Karpov and Reynolds, whose rôles in the mêlée will remain undescribed by me.

On 49:40 Reynolds passed out of defence to Sutton who moved the puck on to Connolly. What Billy did next was pure poetry in motion. He glided forward with poise and balance akin to that of The Great Blondin crossing the Niagara Falls on a tightrope, but rather quicker (The Great who? See below). He skated across the slot to evade the three Phantoms covering their goal, emerged the other side, wide and to the goaltender’s right, and whipped a peach of a wristy past the hapless netman. 5-2 Bison.

Bison had not finished. On 56:48 Stuart “The Cat” Mogg was thrown in the can to sew mailbags at Her Majesty’s pleasure for slashing. He did his porridge. In 1969 the Beach Boys sang a song called “Breakaway”. The opening lines were : “Break break shake away, break breakaway, Now I'm free to do what I want to do” On 58:48 those very words could have been sung by Moggie as he emerged from the penalty box and was fed the puck by Paul Petts (from Kurt Reynolds). Clear of the Phantoms D, who once more must have been as asleep as Sleepy John Estes (who? Oh just an old blues artist), Moggie raced forward like a rat up a drain pipe. He couldn’t have moved faster towards goal than if he’d hitched a ride on Diocles’s chariot (Dio who? See footnote). He didn’t pussyfoot around, but instead whipped a sweet and indeed wicked wrist shot past the despairing netman King, who had been left denuded of cover by his inattentive and sluggardly D. It was a corker of a shot, which had bulged the net before King could say “Hell’s bells”. 6-2 Bison and as good as game over. 1:03 later it really was game over as the buzzer sounded.

Top Bananas were announced. Leigh Jamieson copped the Phantoms’ beers and Ryan Sutton with a 1+2 evening was deemed worthy of the Bison accolade.

Footnote : Gaius Appuleius Diocles was a Roman charioteer, the greatest of them all it is said. Of the 4,257 four-horse races he competed in, Diocles won 1,462. Many of his victories took the form of a come from behind crossing of the finish line at the last possible moment, which made him a massive crowd favourite. Over his 24 year career he amassed a colossal 35,863,120 sesterces in prize money, enough to provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year.