Swashbuckling Pirates Prevent a Bison Boarding

Bison 4 Hull Pirates 3

Autumn Cup semi-final 1^st leg

26/1/18

Planet Ice saw the first leg of the semi-final of the Autumn Cup, played in the Winter and with the final in the Spring. Confused? I am. At least there’s no Summer involved. Avast there you landlubbers. The buccaneering visitors were the Hull Pirates for their first game on the crumbling ice of Basingstoke for nearly a year. Their visits last year ended in a trio of Ooo Betty defeats by 3-1, 6-1 and 7-1. However, now playing in a league, which has been rather harshly described as a “tinpot league” and, worse still a “beer league” (what an insult), the privateers from Kingston Upon Hull are a relatively stronger team and last night, despite being outplayed and outshot by Bison for the whole game, they came away with a very creditable single goal deficit and all to play for in the second leg. They taught Bison a lesson – put your shots away.

It was the piratical visitors who snatched the lead in the game. Our favourite lino, the corpulent Justin Lalonde, seems to be currently obsessed with throwing players out of face offs. At a fifth minute face off he chucked 2 Bison players out and was immediately besieged by Pirates holding up two fingers, victory side showing of course. A face off violation minor was called and onto the power play went the Pirates. And they made it count. Bobby Chamberlain (as opposed to Neville Chamberlain, who is/was someone completely different) lurked menacingly at the top of the crease. Jason Hewitt, a man with a luxuriant beard but no hair, fired in a pass towards the net and there was Chamberlain to poke the puck in 5-hole. His lurking had paid off. 1-0 Pirates. Second assist to Matty Davies.

Bison were level on 12:02. It was an even handed goal set up by Roman Malinik and Aaron “Billy” Connolly. The puck arrived in front of Desperate Dan Scott just inside the blue line. If he had done his homework Hull netman Adam Long must have been aware of Scott’s capability of scoring with thunderous clappers. He may have thought “I don’t want to be here”. But the matter was neither here nor there, as here, or rather there, was where he was, albeit that he might just as well have been not here nor the heretofore mentioned there nor, in fact, anywhere because he couldn’t prevent the puck from crossing the line as it raced across the floor and in. 1-1.

On 17:48 it was 2-1. The goal was preceded by a passage of play where neither side could keep the puck, punctuated with a series of miscontrols and giveaways. The Bespectacled Youth said, “that must be the worst 20 seconds of hockey we have seen this season.” And indeed it was – real beer league stuff, dare I say. But suddenly in the blink of an eye the play went from beer league to NHL as Hallam Wilson took a pass from Kurt “The Scissors” Reynolds, moved forward, drew the defense and found Tomas Karpov all alone in front of the net. The piratical D had offered as little resistance as the ugliest girl in the Golden Nugget saloon in Tombstone circa 1881. Karpov snapped it home and it was 2-1 Bison.

Into the last minute of the period we passed and Bison missed then took a chance to go 3-1 ahead. First Connolly from a pass by Malinik hammered the puck against the post, an occurrence which gave rise to two distinctive sounds, namely a sonorous clunk followed by an Oooo from the crowd. Then seconds later Roman Malinik from a pass from Stuart “The Cat” Mogg set up Connolly once again and this time he whipped a wrist shot past a despairing Long. The puck flew past the hapless goaltender like a jet of toothpaste ejected from a tube at high speed and hit the net with a sound akin to a Steradent tablet plopping into a glass of water ready for your dentures. 3-1 Bison.

So into P2 we passed and things were looking good for the homesters. But all was to go horribly wrong as fate vomited on the Bison eiderdown. Although the home team dominated the period, which ended with a shot count of 16-3 in their favour, it was the guests who scored the only goal of the period.

Early in the period Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird tripped and took a trip to the institute of penal reform which is the penalty box. On 22:24 Bison thought they has bagged a shortie as Desperate Dan Scott, fed by Desperate Dan Davies forced the puck through netminder Long and over the line. As the puck disappeared from the view of Referee Matthews, he blew his whistle. His enthusiasm for stopping the play proved a trifle premature as the puck re-emerged from the personage of Long, who had failed to be in control of the puck, the situation and his faculties all at once. Over the line it went. Some even said that the hand of Mr. Matthews became flat and pointy in a netwards direction, but I didn’t see that. The officials huddled together for a convoluted confusing confabulation clearly cluttered with contradiction and conflicting conjecture. A decision was made. The “goal” was assassinated by the officials. It would have been expunged from the records as if it had never had been scored, which it actually had, but officially hadn’t, had it had ever been recorded in the first place, which it hadn’t, so it wasn’t. (Did you understand that last sentence? I’m not sure I did). Bad luck for Bison.

Worse still for the Basingstoke icemen was the concession of an out of the blue Pirates goal on 35:31. Jamie Chilcott passed out in front of the net where Chamberlain was steaming in and catching the Bison D out to lunch, out and about and out of contention. Chamberlain snapped the puck home. 3-2 Bison. Second assist to the bald but bearded Jason Hewitt.

Things started to go Bison’s way at the beginning of the 3^rd. On 43:41. Elliot Dewey miscontrolled the puck in the neutral zone, nearly lost it but didn’t, recovered and sent Malinik on his way. The Czech chap muscled his way through the Pirates’ defense as easily as Hulk Hogan would push through a crowd of 7 stone weaklings. As Malinik emerged free of defensive encumbrance netman Long must have wished that he could be transported to a parallel universe where he plays behind a proper defense, but he couldn’t and wasn’t. Indeed no. He remained in this universe and had no option but to face his doom, which was about to be sealed by the Czech chap, who rifled a shot past him low blocker side. 4-2 Bison. Assists to Dewey and Reynolds.

Bison looked capable of going on from here and building up a sizable lead to take to the frozen wastes of the North for the return leg. But that’s not what happened. The period played out with no more Ooo Matron moments for Bison, but alas an Ooo Betty one, allowing the Pirates to reduce the deficit to a solitary goal once more. With Baird going down the steps for a trip the Bairdless Bison botched baffling the belligerent buccaneers from blisteringly bagging a bonus. Eh? On 47:15 slick round and round passing gave Hewitt a chance at the back door. The follically challenged but facially hirsute chap smashed a blistering biriyanis shot into a yawningly open, Grand Canyon sized Bison net with Skinns out of position and yielding a gap between him and the goal frame far wider than the gap between Terry Thomas’s front teeth. 4-3.

The period played out with neither side able to find the net further and the game, which had proved a far more entertaining and competitive encounter than you are ever likely to find in a beer league finished with the clock on 0:00. Top bananas were elected - Davies for the Pirates and Scott for Bison. All to play for in the concluding game of the semi-final to be played on Wednesday week. Be there or be square.

Bison Prevail in White Knuckle Shoot Out Drama

Bison 2 Swindon Wildcats 1 (shoot out)

20/1/18

There are those who have bemoaned, bewailed and bellyached about this season’s hockey. Surely not? Verily there are also those, possibly the same people, who have disparagingly, deprecatingly and derogatorily denounced the quality of entertainment in the NIHL. Well such gainsayers should have been there last night (perhaps they were) to see this edge of the seat encounter between two of the heavyweight NIHL-ers, culminating in a white knuckle shoot out and a stunning game winning glove save by Dean Skinns from Aaron Nell’s penalty shot attempt. Oh dear I really have jumped ahead a trifle too far this time – to the end of the game, in fact. There is more to tell, so I invite you to read further, dear reader.

Let’s move to the 13^th minute of P1. Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird steamed into Max Birbraer and the latter crumpled to the ice. “Oi matey! You can’t do that,” said Referee Matthews and he was right. 2 minutes in the box for the cross check. This put the Cats on the power play and they made it count. The scorer was Edgars Bebris with one hell of a clapper. (As you know if you are a regular reader of this nonsense, I have trouble with players with “S” on the ends of their names – how many of Edgars Bebris are they - 2, 4?) Actually only one and it was that one who received a cross ice pass from the slot to just inside the blue line by one of the Aaron Nells (there are two of them – one coaches and the other plays) on 14:32. The Bebris stick was raised and crashed down on the ice to convert the pass into a goal attempt. The puck left the ice with the velocity of toothpaste being ejected from a tube as a ten ton weight falls on it. There did not seem to be a screen in front of Skinns, so the shot must have beaten him for sheer pace. Into the net the puck flew and it was 1-0 Cats.

There was no more scoring in the 1^st, so into the 2^nd we moved and it was at the half way point that Bison pulled it back to a level game. It was a power play goal with Chris Jones (as opposed to Corporal Jones or Miss Jones) banged up in the slammer for boarding both Antonov twins, Vanya and Ivan, although I must confess to being somewhat perplexed as I didn’t see either of them actually hitting the boards from Jones’ challenge. Oh well Mr. Matthews knows best. It matters not a jot for what hanging offense he was in the box. The fact is he was in the box. Let’s move on.

On the 7th of November 1974 Richard John Bingham disappeared. Who? Why Lord Lucan of course. That's him below.

What relevance has Lord Lucan to this game? Well in the middle of P2, as I have already mentioned, (30:35 gone to be precise), the Cats’ D disappeared in a similar fashion to Lord Lucan. The only differences were that in this case the homicide of nannies was not involved and also the D were seen again, but only after Bison had levelled the game. Slick out of D passing between Stuart “The Cat” Mogg and Rabbit’s Foot Joe Baird found an all alone Ryan Sutton in the neutral zone without a Cat between him and the goal. He charged forward, not in a Puffing Billy-esque manner (Puffing who? A steam locomotive from 1814 with a top speed of 5 mph - see below), but more like von Ryan’s Express (von Ryan’s what? A film from 1965 with Frank Sinatra - see below). He closed in from wide to the goaltender’s right and unleashed a snipe which clearly had the accuracy of an Agincourt archer’s arrow and the bamboozlement of a Tommy Cooper magic trick, as it flew into the net past an astonished Renny Marr. The Bison crowd voiced their appreciation. Some shouted “HURRAH!”, others “YAHOO!”, others still “BRAVO!”. I am reliably informed by Duracell Man, a taken-root incumbent of Block D, that, from his position of as near juxtaposition to the goal at that end as you can get, Sutton skated past blowing kisses to the crowd. Some may have regarded this as an outrage to public decency. 1-1 and all to play for.

1-1  it was at the sound of the buzzer to signify an end to P2 hostilities.

To say that P3 proved to be edge of the seat would be an understatement. With so much at stake neither side wanted to lose and a shot count of 8 to 5 in Bison’s favour illustrates it wasn’t gung-ho for the win. Then with 5 minutes left the Cats got a power play with Roman Malinik adjudged to have raised his stick too high. The Bespectacled Youth immediately descended into a state of pessimism as he wallowed in a cess pool of the most abject defeatism. “They'll score from this,” he said. But they didn’t. In fact, the best opportunity of a go ahead goal fell to Bison. Sam Bullas was guilty of poor puck control and then loss of balance, miscontrolling the puck in the neutral zone and then falling to the ice in a manner most ignominious as he tried to prevent the Antonov twins from taking possession. He failed and suddenly the Antonovs were in on goal and shooting. Marr saved Bullas’s blushes and blocked the shot. You owe him a beer, Sam.

Both sets of fans must have been relived when the final buzzer sounded. A point each. The usual nerve wracking experience of overtime followed with neither side breaking the deadlock. And so into the even more nerve wracking experience of a penalty shoot out. The first 2 attempts from Malinik and Jones were both saved. Desperate Dan Davies was next for Bison. His bamboozling of Marr with one of the cleverest dekes you are ever likely to see was a masterpiece worthy, had it possessed physical form, of hanging in the Tate. In the Monty Python parrot sketch the Norwegian Blue remains stationary and unanimated throughout. As the puck slid across the line from Davies’s final prod past a hopelessly floored Marr, the Bison backers behaved in a horizontally opposed manner to the aforementioned fowl. Jumping up from their seats, waving their arms in the air, shouting, kissing each other and weeping for joy, they showed their delight at Davies’s scoring of the go ahead goal.

Next up was Bebris. His shot flew high over the bar and would have reached the moon had the plexi not stopped it. Then Josh Smith had his shot saved, which left it all down to Cats’ player coach Nell, a deadly marksman if ever there was one. He had to score. Once again the Bespectacled Youth descended into a state of funereal pessimism. “He’ll score,” said he. But he was wrong. Nell’s attempt to find the top corner of the net failed as Skinns threw out a gloved hand, like a frog with a long sticky tongue going for a fly, and deflected the puck away. The noise which greeted the goal might have led you to believe that Krakatoa had erupted again (see footnote). Game over. Bison win.

Top Bananas were elected. Bebris for the Cats and Sutton for Bison.

Footnote : The eruption of volcano Krakatoa in 1883 was most deadly volcanic eruptions in modern history. It had the explosive force of 200 megatons of TNT. (10,000 times greater than the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945). 36,000 people died, many as a result of thermal injury from the blasts and many more as victims of the tsunamis with wave heights reaching 140 feet that followed the collapse of the volcano into the sea. One ship was carried and dumped 1 mile inland on the crest of one of the waves. The eruption sent a cloud of gas and debris 11 cubic miles in volume (including lumps of rock the size of houses) 15 miles into the air, darkening skies up to 275 miles around. In the immediate vicinity, sunlight was not seen for 3 days. Barographs around the globe documented that the shock waves in the atmosphere circled the planet at least 7 times. The eruption was heard as far away as Perth, Australia, some 2,800 miles away. (NB most of the figures are estimated).

Ooo Betty! Evening for the Tigers’ Hapless Back Up Netman

Bison 5 Telford Tigers 3

6/1/18

Cast your minds back to September. The Tigers whipped Bison 5-2 in the very same competition – the National Cup. At 2-5 to the bad I wrote “By now the Bison backers had decided that the cup wasn’t worth winning. I have not seen a picture of said cup and, in fact, it probably doesn’t exist yet, but I am sure it is or will be a gaudy pot, badly crafted and not big enough to hold a boiled egg.” So you might have thought that last night’s dead rubber with Bison already eliminated would have been a lacklustre devil may care affair. You’d be wrong. Bison gave it their all, were the dominant team and ran out worthy winners. However, the first period didn’t quite go the way the homesters had planned ……..

In fact P1 belonged to the Tigers. Although a pretty even period in terms of shots on goal, the Tigers were the ones who bagged the goals. Their first occurred on 6:07 with Adam Jones firing through the 5-hole of Dean Skinns, having been set up by Jason Silverthorn and Rick Plant. 0-1 Tigers.

And then on 9:16 something as undesirable as the contents of a spittoon from a tobacco chewers’ conference occurred. Bison went further behind. From Block C it looked like a slick passing move involving Silverthorn and Weaver with Plant tapping in at the back door. However, the game sheet, although crediting Plant with the goal, gave a solitary assist to Brodie Jesson with no mention of Silverthorn or Weaver. Eh? Only goes to show that the game sheet is sometimes as inaccurate as my reports. 0-2 Tigers.

Bison continued to press and finally bagged a goal on 25:04. It started with a typical Tomas Karpov drive on goal. He was forced wide, but managed to turn on a sixpence (5p piece if you prefer) and delivered a pass into space, not of the outer variety but into the slot. Advancing into that space with the speed of the 9:15 to Waterloo was Desperate Dan Scott. He brought his stick down and delivered a Jumping-Jehosophat-on-a-pogo-stick clapper. Blistering biriyanis! The puck flew past goaltender Dennis Bell before he could say “Tatianna McTaramatee”, notwithstanding that I am sure he had no intention of saying that anyway. Goal Bison and arrears reduced to 1-2. Strangely enough Karpov was not credited with an assist, but Paul Petts was. Eh?

P2 closed and it had been a period which Bison had dominated, allowing only 4 shots on their net. P3 opened with Bison looking to continue in the same vein. And this they did eventually running out comfortable winners. Unbeknown to me at the time, the Tigers had swapped goaltenders. I discovered this when studying the game sheet on the EIHA website. By the way did you know that EIHA also stands for European Industrial Hemp Association? Piffle! I hear you say. Google it then. So let’s get away from hemp, industrial or otherwise, and get back to hockey. 18 year old Jonah Armstrong took to the ice, thankfully not vomited there from the belly of a whale like his Biblical namesake (see below). The Tigers’ fans hoped he would prove Berlin wall-esque. He did, but, much to the chagrin of the aforementioned group, it was the Berlin wall on November 10^th, 1989, i.e. the day after it had fallen down.

Armstrong’s first nightmare occurred on 41:31. That feline fellow Stuart “The Cat” Mogg speculatively floated in a lob towards the goal. I am not quite sure what happened immediately after. What I think happened was the puck bounced off Armstrong and there at the back door lurked Desperate Dan Davies, who hammered the puck home, making the young goaltender feel more desperate than Desperate Dan himself. 2-2.

Bison surged ahead on 51:25 by way of a power play goal. But we jump ahead. On 50:48 Referee Evans, the maker of several perplexing decisions during the game (don’t get me started), called an icing violation. What that was we can only speculate, but, into the box went Jesson to sew mailbags for a couple of minutes (or rather less than 2 minutes as it proved). Within a minute Bison had made the Tigers pay. Scott to Karpov, who put Davies in. Desperate Dan skated forward like crazy, at the double, post haste, pronto, chop-chop and PDQ and with the speed, velocity and pace of a bat out of hell, not to mention a rat up a drainpipe. He shaped to shoot and proved he is as deadly a marksman as Wild Bill Hickok and with more notches on his stick than Bill had on the handle of his Colt 45. (By the way don't confuse him with Alfred Hitchcock, who is someone completely different. That's Wild Bill below.) His top shelf wrist shot flew past the glove of Armstrong and into the net. Last week he scored an almost identical same top corner of the goal goal against the Phantoms. The illumination of the goal light was the signal for an explosion of joyous jubilation in the Bison blocks as the assembled vociferated their approbation with exclamations of ecstatic glee, euphoric felicity and blissful elation, elevating them to a place characterized by oblivion to pain, worry and anguish. They had reached an unprecedented level of nirvana, at least for now. 3-2 Bison.

  

3 minutes later the Bison backers were forced to descend from their high state of nirvana as the Tigers leveled the game. How it went in I am not sure, as it was a bundled effort, but I saw Skinns spinning round like the ballerina on the top of a music box and the puck sliding over the line. “Goalie interference!” shouted the Bespectacled Youth, but whether it was a Tigers’ player or a Bison player or possibly even Referee Evans who had made contact with him resulting in his rotational movement and consequent inability to stop the puck I cannot say. The referee saw no infraction, which doesn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t one. However, his flat hand pointing netwardsly indicated it was now 3-3.

So all to play for. What amazing piece of skill would decide this game and which way?  Suppose I told you that a D-man with a speculatively lobbed backhander would beat the goaltender on 55:30, you would think I was making that up wouldn’t you? Well there’s one in the eye for you non-believers because that is exactly what happened. Stuart “The Cat” Mogg, master of the lob and hope for the best, received a pass from the Antonov twins and speculatively lobbed the puck, as I have already mentioned, in a netwards direction, as he had 14 minutes before, only this time off his backhand, proving that, when it comes to lobbing the puck netwards, he is no one trick pony. Much to everyone’s astonishment (some may even have fallen into a dead faint – Moggie didn’t) the goal light illuminated. It was hardly an Ooo Matron! goal for Moggie, but, sadly for the hapless goaltender, it was an Ooo Betty! one for him and one which must have had him thinking of alternative employment. 4-3 Bison.

   

Not only were things getting embarrassing for the unfortunate netman they were also getting hot as Bison piled on the pressure. In fact, it couldn’t have been hotter for him than if he’d been rotating on a spit at Satan’s barbecue. With only four and a half minutes left he had to Berlin wall-up and make sure he kept Bison out to enable his forwards to snatch another leveling score at the other end. He failed. On 56:42 Bison gave the fat lady notice – start practicing your scales, woman. Set up by Hallam Wilson and Roman Malinik, Aaron “Billy” Connolly found himself in front of the net, which he soon made bulge with a top shelf backhander and, in doing so, must have propelled the hapless netman to a state of funereal perturbation. He had taken to the ice with his team at 2-1 to the good. Now they were 3-5 to the bad. He had allowed 4 goals from 13 shots on his net (why do we use that word “allow” – it makes it sound so polite). More Ooo Betty and 5-3 Bison.

And 5-3 was the final score as the buzzer blared forth with 0:00 showing on the clock. Top Bananas were elected. They were Tait for the Tigers and Baird for Bison.