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 10th, 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.
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