Bison 3 Milton Keynes Lightning 2 (OT)
2/11/19
This was not a
game for the purist, the aficianado, the lover of purple sporting spectacularity.
Indeed no. So, if you choose to read further, dear reader, do not expect an account
of Ooo Matron hockey, deeds of derring-do, occurrences of edge of seat excitement.
This was a gritty struggle, which resulted in a win for Bison - just.
P1 opened and
the visitors had much the better of the opening 10 minutes, much to the
surprise of many if not all. But it was no surprise, at least to some if not
others, when they took the lead on 11:12. Tom Carlon picked up the puck from
Rio Grinell-Parke and snapped a close range snipe through the slightest of gaps
between the post and Dan “The Beast” Weller-Evans. 1-0 Lightning.
This was an unsatisfactory
state of affairs for the homesters. But a levelling score soon after would send
the crowd into a Krakatoa-esque celebration. On 12:38 Logan Prince’s conduct
fell short of what was expected. “I’m not having that,” said Ref Matthews. He
blew his whistle and signalled a holding offence. It turned out to be a very
unwise course of action for the fellow, the player that is not the referee, as
his team were to slide into the slippery pit of disaster and lose their lead. On
14:28 a tipped shot was blocked by Brandon Stones, but not engulfed or covered
by him, resulting in a scene most unseemly and unsightly in the space in front
of the goal. It was a veritable lawless turmoil, an unruly mob situation, a
disorganised free-for-all and an anarchic rat’s nest all rolled into one as two
sets of players became committed to sending the puck in opposite directions.
Alex Sampford prevailed and put the puck in a place which occasioned the
appearance of the referee’s flat and netwardsly pointing flat hand. It was a
goal. The assistants were identified as Marek Malinsky and Liam “Square Sausage”
Morris. 1-1.
The scoring of
the goal injected a new vigour into the homesters and the pendulum began to
swing away from MK and towards Bison. The clock ran down and it appeared that
the period would finish all square. But no matron. With only 7 seconds
remaining Sampford, set up by Adam Harding, had a crack. The puck flew towards
Stones, who saved, but alas he proved once more to be somewhat rubberoid and
the puck deflected to Gordon “George” Norcliffe. In making the save Stones had
gone to ground and he was now down and out, not in Paris and London as was
George Orwell (eh? See footnote 1 and below for a picture of said literary gent), but down in the blue paint and out of
contention to make a save. Norcliffe drove the puck into the vacated net. Blistering
biriyanis it was 2-1 Bison.
P2 opened, but
not before P1 had ended of course. It was to be a period of no goals, but instead
a succession of penalties on MK. First to do porridge was Lewis Christie. He
went down the steps for tripping. Then Jordon Stokes had his collar felt for
hooking. Shortly after Lewis Christie, having come up the steps a couple of
minutes earlier, now went down them again for tripping. Then Ross Green was banged
up for boarding, whilst from the same mȇlée, Tom Carlon was thrown in the can
for roughing. Lightning players were spending more time in the penalty box than
Ronnie Biggs spent in Wandsworth Prison. (Ronnie who? See footnote 2). However,
despite the numerous power play opportunities occasioned by these multifarious
felonies including a full 2 minutes 5 on 3, Bison could not breach the Stones
pipes. And so P2 ended without further scoring. 2-1 Bison it remained.
Into P3 we
passed and Bison needed to step up their game as they had not been the better
team, as expected, with the shot count for the two periods being approximately
even, even though Bison had enjoyed 7 power plays to MK’s 3. As the period
ground on it became increasingly frustrating for the home fans and players
alike. There was a sense of foreboding. The dastardly pessimists began to fear
the worst and indeed the worst happened to prove the dastardly pessimists right
to have been pessimistic. MK levelled it. The goal was a masterpiece of set up.
The player in question took possession of the puck, skated behind the goal line
and out the other side. As he skated forward, even the opposing fans’ most
disparaging partisan, suffering from a paucity in the magnanimous generosity
department (mean and biased if you prefer), surely couldn’t help but admire the
way his fleet of footness skating and clever stick handling enabled him to race
along the boards looking for the killer pass. Suddenly he rifled a sideways
pass to the umlaut bearing Ari Nȁrhi, who lurked in front of the crease. Back
in 1975 Eric Carmen released a song entitled “All by Myself”. This was revived by
various artists including Cheryl Crowe and Celine Dion. Well all by himself was
exactly what Nȁrhi
was now. Oh dear. The Bison D had been caught out, caught napping, caught on
the hop, caught with their trousers down and caught a cold as a result. The
goaltender’s goose, had he been carrying one, would have been well and truly
cooked. Dan the Beast had been hung out to dry. From that position Nȁrhi would have
had to have been an incompetent dummkopf wallowing in a quagmire of
maladroitness to miss. He wasn’t and didn’t. Who was the set up man? Well alas
and alack he was a Bison man. I know who he was, but I shall spare his blushes and he
will remain unidentified, at least by me. 2-2.
So we had 10
minutes left to play. Could either side break the deadlock? Well no they couldn’t
and so into overtime the game passed. 1:49 into the aforementioned period of
additional play the deadlock was indeed broken. Coach Tait and Malinsky set
Harding on his way towards goal. His movement forward was velocious, elegant
and admirable and his stick handling far removed from maladroitness, ineptitude
and bungling as he closed in on the MK goal to test mettle of the Lightning
custodian. Annie Oakley could shoot a playing card in half, edge on, firing her
Winchester rifle backwards over her shoulder using a mirror to sight it. That’s
her below doing that very thing. Davy
Crockett, legendary frontiersman, could split a musket ball shooting at the
edge of an axe. Could Harding match that degree of shooting accuracy? Of course
he could. He whipped a wrist shot past a despairing Stones and it was Goodnight
Vienna. 3-2 Bison and game over.
The time arrived
for the election of the Top Bananas. Unsurprisingly both goaltenders, Brandon
Stones and Dan “The Beast” Weller-Evans with save percentages of 90.6 and 93.1
respectively took the laurels.
Footnote 1: “Down and Out in Paris and London” Published in 1933
is an autobiographical account of George Orwell’s
time as a struggling writer among the desperately poor and destitute in London
and Paris.
Footnote 2: Ronnie Biggs was one of the Great Train robbers, who
achieved notoriety by escaping from Wandsworth Prison in 1965 less than 2 years
into his sentence and lived for 36 years on the run in Brazil safe from
extradition. Contrary to popular opinion he wasn’t one of the masterminds of
the robbery. He was merely a small time petty crook. That's the geezer below.
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