Bison 4 Swindon Wildcats 5 (shoot out)
27/12/17
Following on
from their defeat of Bison at home on the previous evening, the Wildcats journeyed
to Planet Ice knowing that a win would clinch top place in this National Cup
group. They managed it, but only just – it was truly a skin of the teeth job. Quite
amazingly Bison, short of arguably their two best players in Reynolds and
Karpov and with nothing to play for in this competition, very nearly sent the
Cats to an unexpected defeat, only to have the cup of victory snatched from
their lips with 10 seconds remaining. But, as usual, I jump ahead, so please
let us return to the start of the proceedings.
P1 opened and,
after early opportunities on both sides to nose ahead, it was the Cats who
bagged the first goal. We were treated to fine example of “déjà-vu”, which, in
case you don’t know, is where information learned is forgotten but nevertheless
stored in the brain, and similar occurrences invoke the contained knowledge,
leading to a feeling of familiarity because the event or experience being
experienced has already been experienced in the past. Eh? On 11:23 Ben
Nethersell fed Aaron Nell, who skated across goal and dropped a pass to Max
Birbraer. Just as he had done on 19:32 of the first period of the Bison v Cats
game on 11/11/17, he beat Dean Skinns with an over the shoulder number. 1-0 Cats.
The Cats’ lead
lasted but 2 minutes. President Trump has the power to press a red button and
send a nuclear missile to strike at North Korea. On 13:22 Bison roused into
action the person who presses the button to change the numbers on the scoreboard.
He may not have the same power as Trump, but his finger came down on said
button with just as much zest and zeal as Trump’s would on his nuclear strike
button and the number below Home changed from 0 to 1 without initiating a
nuclear holocaust. Desperate Dan Scott skated forward in a threatening manner.
He dropped, not dead, a clanger or someone in it, but instead a pass for Josh
Smith following up behind. Smith whipped a vicious wrist shot past the
goaltender Matthew Smital. Smital’s attempt to stop the puck could be described
as too smital too late (well that’s a lot better than what you been getting out
of your Christmas crackers). 1-1.
If the Bison
backers had thoughts of their team taking the game by the scruff of the neck
and surging into the lead, they were to be disappointed. A minute and a half
later Bison slumped once more to a deficit. A neat passing move between Luke
Johnson, not to be confused with Jack Johnson and Phil Hill, not to be confused
with the other Phil Hill, set up Floyd Taylor, not to be confused with Pretty
Boy Floyd (see footnote). His wrist shot whipped past Skinns and it was 1-2
Cats.
So the Cats had
clawed their way back into the lead and when P1 ended it had been fairly even
in terms of play and shots on goal, but so far it was the Cats who had got the
cream. Bison couldn’t pussyfoot around in P2. They had to fight like two cats
in a sack and we were hoping the next 20 minutes of play would reveal which way
the cat would jump. But if we had hoped they would set the cat amongst the
pigeons, we were to be disappointed. Despite dominating with 13 shots to 4 on
goal, Bison ended P2 no more goals. 1-2 Cats it remained. P3, however, proved
rather different, but I won’t let the cat out of the bag here, but implore you,
dear reader, to read on.
The game ground
on. Bison were making no impression. The 50 minute point passed. Who would have
thought we would see an explosive end to the game? Not even Nostradamus had he
been present. But that is what happened. Lets go forward to 52:27. Ben
Nethersall behaved like a ne’er-do-well and was called for slashing. Down the
steps he went for a touch of porridge. The Cats had to keep their discipline,
but they failed because on 53:24, Neil Liddiard was also ordered up the river to
do a stretch for a slashing offense. 5 on 3 for 1:04. The Cats survived and
made it back to 5 on 4. Could they survive this? Well no. On 55:10, as the
Liddiard penalty ebbed towards expiry, Bison bagged one. The move had considerably
more artistic merit than Damien Hirst’s half a sheep in a tank of formaldehyde,
which has none at all - well that’s my view anyway. Desperate Dan Davies and
Roman Malinik worked the puck around and found the spare man. He was Desperate
Dan Scott, who was all alone in front of the net. Desperate Dan (of the Scott not
Davies variety) whacked his stick against the puck and smashed it into the net,
not the type you would surf and not the type you would slip through, but the
goal net. 2-2. A blanket of noise indicating euphoria filled the air from the
Bison seats.
It didn’t remain
2-2 for long. 2 minutes later the Antonov twins brilliantly worked an
opportunity for Josh Smith. On this occasion the feline defending was far from smoked
salmon and caviar, but more akin to a stone cold Pukka Pie with soggy pastry
and a nondescript filling of mushy steak and kidney with no discernible
kidney……or steak come to think of it. Smith was a solitary lonely figure with
no-one to distract him as he dwelt like a malingerer at the back door. He did
what Scott had done and smashed the puck into the back of the net. The scoring
of the goal was met by an eruption of enthusiasm from the Bison backers so
vociferous that the very rivets of the steel girders of Planet Ice were shaken
loose. 3-2 Bison.
The game, which
had suddenly been turned on its head by Bison’s 2 goals, was now drawing to an
unexpectedly exciting conclusion, but there was to be a twist, more twisty than
Oliver himself, to come. On 58:07 a double penalty was called. Callum Wilson
hooked and Jordan Kelsall held a stick, which was other than his own and
probably Wilson’s. 2 minutes sewing mailbags for each. Then confusion reigned.
The game appeared to be restarting with a 5 on 4 power play to the Cats. From
the Bison blocks shouts were shouted and insults were made in an officialwards
direction, casting doubt upon their ability to count (perhaps an abacus should
have been supplied). The game restarted. Suddenly the puck slewed all the way
down the ice from the Bison end. We turned our heads to find the Cats’
goaltender to be absent from the net. Ah that explained everything. Smital had
been pulled.
Bison defended
well and it looked as if the points were to be theirs. However, in a
Tantalus-esque manner the cup of success was cruelly snatched from their lips
with only 10 seconds remaining. The puck fell to Nell way out wide and at an acute
angle to the goal. His only hope was to swing at it and hope for the best. He
cracked a humdinger of a one timer clapper with all the venom he could muster.
The biscuit should have flown high or wide, but it didn’t. It flew past Skinns
and into the net. It was a masterpiece of quick thinking and accurate shooting,
maybe with a bit of luck thrown in as well, as, from that angle, the space
between the goal frame and Skinns must have been negligible. 3-3.
The final
regulation time buzzer blared forth and overtime it was. This passed without
any further scoring and so into one of those dreaded penalty shoot outs we
moved. The less said about the shoot out the better. The Cats scored with all 3
of their shots and deservedly won. Top bananas were elected. Whitfield and
Petts were the recipients of their respective teams’ accolade.
Footnote : Jack Johnson was the first African American world heavyweight
boxing champion, winning the title in 1908.
Phil Hill was the first American to win the Formula
1 World Championship (1961). He also won Le Mans 3 times.
In contrast to these two great sporting heroes, Pretty
Boy Floyd was a ruthless American bank robber active in the 1930s. He was tracked
down and killed by the FBI in 1934.
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