Bison Teach the Phantoms How to Come Back From the Dead

Bison 4 Peterborough Phantoms 3

3/2/18

In “Total Eclipse of the Heart” Bonnie Tyler (that's her below) sang “Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I'm only falling apart”. What we saw at Planet Ice last night was just that, not a falling in love, but a falling apart, as the Peterborough Phantoms put in a nightmare P3 shift and managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Cruising at 2-0, having restricted Bison to only 12 shots on goal in the first 40 minutes of play, the visitors managed to throw the game away with a chunderous defensive display in P3, which saw them concede 4. It turned into a Jumping-Jehosophat-on-a-pogo-stick evening for the Bison backers. I cannot remember seeing similar scenes of jubilation at the end of a game since Bison won the EPL title. But I have jumped ahead. There is much to report, so, with your leave, dear reader, I shall attempt to describe the extraordinary events of last night in the following humble account.

P1 opened. There were no goals. P1 closed. No point saying any more than that.

P2 opened and it was to be a period which belonged to the Phantoms. So much so that by the end of the period a feeling of glass-half-emptyism had engulfed the Bison crowd. It was a must win game, preferably in regulation time to deny the visitors a point, but that scenario seemed as unlikely as the Bearded Rabble Rouser of Block A riding a Shetland pony over the jumps to win the Grand National. At the end of P2 the poltergeists from Peterborough went in with a deserved 2-0 lead, having outplayed Bison and restricted them to a mere 5 shots on goal for the period. Their first score came on 33:23. James Ferrara and Leigh Jamieson set up Nathan Salem for a shot, which deflected off goaltender Dean Skinns’s pad and in. 1-0 Phantoms.

Then on 35:59, a mere 36 seconds of play later, it was 2-0. Skinns made the save. But the puck lobbed up into the air and Ales Padelek put it in when it returned to earth, an event which Sir Isaac Newton would have greeted with an “I told you so” comment. There was no immediate award of the goal, but instead the officials huddled together, not too keep warm I am sure, but to discuss the finer points. Had there been goaltender interference? Had the net come off its moorings before the puck entered it? The result of the discussion was negative on both counts. It was a good goal. Owen Griffiths and Tom Norton were declared as the assistants. 2-0 Phantoms.

P3 opened and the assembled were to witness an astonishing comeback with the Phantoms conceding 4 goals from 13 shots on goal sending netman King’s save percentage for the game spiralling into the ground like a shot down ME109 nosediving into a Kentish field during the Battle of Britain. No sooner had the period opened than Tomas Karpov was away and in on goal. The Czech chap was hooked by Darius Pliskauskas in much the same way as J.R Hartley would hook a fish. The whistle blew. Strangely enough a penalty shot was not awarded, but instead a 2 minute penalty for the miscreant. It looked as if the Phantoms had got off the hook with that one, but not so as Bison proceeded to score on the power play. The puck became trapped on the boards. Josh Smith dug it out and found Karpov on the point. He fired a pass to Desperate Dan Scott on the opposite point with a shout of “Oi Geezer! Stick your lumber on that, matey”. And stick his lumber on that was exactly what Scott did. The clappered puck flew in off goaltender King with 41:54 on the clock. Hoss Cartwright would have stopped that one, but King, of slighter build, didn’t. (Hoss who? See footnote). 1-2 Phantoms.

3 minutes later it was 2-2 as Rounding levelled it. The Phantoms were disintegrating like a dry stone wall in a hurricane. Terrible puck control allowed Ryan Sutton to snatch possession. In the blink of an eye he was over the blue line and finding General Grant Rounding at the back door. I would have liked to describe the ghostly D as statuesque. But to stand like a statue you have to be there in the first place. The D failed to qualify on that count. They were nowhere to be seen as Rounding with, as Louis Armstrong (see below) once sang, “all the time in the world” controlled the puck and rifled past King. 2-2.

  

Bison had snatched the momentum away from the Phantoms, but the sepulchral visitors almost immediately snatched it back with a power play goal 23 seconds of play later. With Kurt “The Scissors” Reynolds banged up for tripping, a smart move between Padelek and Will Weldon created a man over. On this occasion the third man was not Harry Lime, but rather Owen Griffiths, who snapped home the puck on one knee from a position right on top of the goal. 2-3 Phantoms and surely Bison killed off. Well actually no, so don’t go off to make a cup of tea – there is much more for me to relate.

The spectral East Anglians now had the opportunity to close down the game and cruise to a win which would have virtually sealed the title for them. However, their inept D was a car crash waiting to happen just as surely as a partially sighted pensioner would prove a recipe for disaster behind the wheel of a Santa Pod drag racer. And it all went pear shaped for them on 53:07 when Bison levelled the game once more. A shot from Karpov was blocked by goaltender King. However, the netman’s failure to freeze the puck led to a helter-skelter, topsy-turvy, harem-scarem, free-for-all mother of all every man for himself mêlées in the goalmouth and it would be Josh Smith who would get the vital touch and poke the puck over the line as the net came off its moorings. Referee Matthews’s right hand became flat and pointed in a netwards direction, thus declaring it to be a good goal. 3-3.

The final part of the apparitional fall apart occurred some 3 minutes later on 56:10 to be precise. “Goodbye, goodbye, we’re leaving you, skiddlydye. Goodbye, we wish a fond goodbye, fa-ta-ta-ta-ta, fa-ta-ta-ta”. So sang Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, pictured below. It might just as well have been sung by the Phantoms’ D because they appeared to have left the game, hanging their hapless netman out to dry, as Karpov found Desperate Dan Davies at the back door with only King to beat. This he did at the second attempt. The goal light illuminated and a sudden commotion stirred amongst the Bison backers, who in unison sprang to their feet and delivered a vocal hullabaloo loud enough to register on the Richter Scale. Amongst the wraithlike visitors a feeling of funereal perturbation haunted their consciousness. 4-3 Bison.

4 minutes to play and enough time for the eidolon-esque visitors to snatch it back. But they were to be taught a lesson by Bison on how to close down a game and the final phase of the game saw them desperately huff and puff, but fail to produce a realistic threat on the Bison goal. Things became unbearably tense in the last couple of minutes with a pulled goaltender and all manner of franticism, but still the Phantoms could not pull a rabbit out of the hat (not that they were trying to do precisely that) and produce that desperately needed piece of Ooo Matron hockey and a goal which would have given them a point and an opportunity to go on and win the game. “It's too late, baby now, it's too late” sang Carole King in 1971 - that's her below. And so it proved for the Phantoms. Ooo Matron turned into Ooo Betty. The final buzzer sounded and the arena exploded, not literally of course. They whooped, they hollered, they hugged, they high-5ed, they emitted banshee-esque wails and war cries, mothers threw their babies into the air and grown men cried. OK the last two probably didn’t happen, but, suffice it to say, the place was filled with scenes of unbridled jubilation. Bison had snatched the laurel wreath, not wraith, of victory from around the neck of the Phantoms.

All that remained to be done was to elect the Top Bananas. They were respectively Padelek for the visitors and Davies for the homesters.

Footnote : Those of a certain age will remember Hoss Cartwright, played by Dan Blocker, in Bonanza, the most successful cowboy TV show of the 60s. He arrived in this world on 10^th December 1928, weighing in at a staggering 14 lbs, much to the surprise of his mother I am sure. At the peak of his stardom Dan stood 6’4” and weighed 365 lbs, about 100 lbs heavier than Fatty Arbuckle. Now you know.