Bison 7 Bees 6
6/11/21
Jumping Jehosophat on a pogo stick! What a night! Those lucky enough to be at Planet Ice last night were treated to a game of purple pulsating spectacularity. Yes indeed. It was a match full of Ay Caramba! thrills, spills, goals and, to satisfy the blood lust of certain sections of the crowd (OK all of us really), scenes of the most appalling violence close to the end of the match when tempers flared more voluminously than the bell bottoms of a Bay City Roller and bubbled over like a saucepan of milk left on the stove. The end result was a scene of the most murderous brutality more akin to a WW1 battlefield than a hockey rink. But more about that later – there was actually a hockey match played.
The Bees took the lead close to the end of P1. On 16:45 enter James Galazzi, a hockey villain of the most abhorrent kind. Who remembers him spearing Ollie Stone in the face for no reason in the dying seconds of a game at the Hive a couple of years ago and leaving him lying in a pool of blood at the top of the crease? No we haven’t forgotten that. And that is just one of a litany of villainous acts over the years. He has made himself as popular with opposing fans as a medium rare fillet steak at a convention of vegans. And indeed it was he who was the catalyst for the opprobrious scenes at the end of the match. But more about that later – you will have to wait. On this occasion he knocked over Alex “Mittens” Mettam and was sent to the box for goalie interference. In the resulting power play it was the Bees who scored. Bursting forward in a 3 on 1 (how can that happen in a power play?), Michael Power squeezed the puck in off Adam “Oh no not Jonesy” Jones’s skate. Josh Kelly and Dominik Gabaj were the assistants. 1-0 Bees.
The Bees lead was short lived. On 19:21
Dancing Jay King, set up by Ryan Sutton, fired a shot goalwards. Adam Goss in
the Bees’ net must have been confident of keeping the shot out, but his
confidence was very soon to be replaced by vexation as Alex Roberts thrust his
twig in the way and the redirected puck flew past the anguished netman. 1-1.
The period ground on with chances on both sides. Then on 31:59 the man who looked suspiciously like Brendan Baird, but who wasn’t, scored with a deflected shot. Who was he? Joe Baird, Brendan’s elder brother, of course. Webb with the assist.
This was bad news for Bison. 2-1 up to 2-3 down. Could they pull things round by the end of P2? The answer is yes they could and did. The villainous Galazzi had been sent to the house of correction for a slash on 36:52. On 37:34 a shot from a man wo looks suspiciously like Brendan Baird, which isn’t surprising as he actually was Brendan Baird, fired in a shot. Gordon “George” Norcliffe thrust his lumber into the line of the shot and the biscuit changed direction and flew past the melancholy custodian. It was not proving Goss’s night for stopping redirects. Harding with the second assist. 3-3.
Bison’s revival continued. On 38:26 they resnatched (is that a real word? Spellcheck doesn’t seem to think so) the lead on 38:25. “Break, break, shake away, break break away, now I’m free to do what I wanna do.” So sang the Beach Boys in 1969. Well what we saw was a break away, not by men in striped shirts (see below – blimey wasn’t their bass player tall (or was he standing on Marcelo Bielsa's bucket - see above) and note also he had his own microphone while the other 3 had to share – that’s not fair), but by Filip Martinec, sporting a moustache akin to a caterpillar (perhaps it was one blu-tacked to his upper lip) and Jones, who accepted the pass from Big Phil and clappered one past a hideously exposed Goss. More anguish for the beleaguered custodian. Second assist to Zac Milton. 4-3 Bison.
End of P2 and start of P3. It wasn’t 4-3 for long, as the Bees came back on 41:22 Josh Smith whipped in assisted by Gabaj.
It must have vexed Bison to let the
Bees back into the game and imbued a fiery determination to restore (indeed
resnatch) their advantage. Starting on 44:31 the Bees did what Bonnie Tyler (that's her below) did
in “Total eclipse of the heart” – they fell apart. In 15 seconds their position
of parity was thrown out of the window, given the old heave-ho, the elbow and
the shove, not to mention unceremoniously thrown out of the room by the seat of
its pants with 2 lightning strikes by the homesters. First Elliott Dewey set
Liam “Square Sausage” Morris away on the left. He, the latter named, struggled out
of a Titanic encounter with a Bees’ D-man on the boards, skated towards goal
and unleashed an unstoppable wrist shot past the downheated Goss, sending him deeper
into his cesspool of dejected defeatism. 5-4 Bison.
But Goss’s bad evening was to get worse only 15 seconds later when Morris set up Aidan Doughty for a shot. Such shot was saved by Goss, but the puck bounced off him and bobbled around in the blue paint. It was a chunderous situation for beleaguered custodian and desperate measures were required. Could be poke check the puck away, cover it with his catcher or even fall or sit on it? Alas he couldn’t do any of those things and what happened next must have sent him spiralling even further downwards into his advanced state of Prozac popping lugubriosity as Norcliffe stabbed the puck over the line. 6-4 Bison. Second assist to Morris.
Bison were rampant and further
punishment was to be doled out. On 51:07 Doughty and Norcliffe combined to set
up Harding at the top of the crease. He, the latter named, smacked the puck
home for 7-4 Bison.
Goss’s confidence must have been collapsing like a tower of Jenga blocks when you pull out the bottom four blocks suddenly. Coach Sheppard has seen enough and, had he been Popeye, he would have said, “That's all I can stands, I can stands no more”. The by now inconsolable netman was pulled from the net (not literally I must say – now that would have been a sight worth seeing) and replaced by the back up Curtis Warburton.
The opprobrious violence mentioned at the beginning of this report kicked off on 52:31. Galazzi, the aforementioned nefarious and indeed iniquitous assassin, smashed Dancing Jay King into the boards behind the goal and left him in a heap on the ice. Morris didn’t have time to say “I say, old chap, I’m going to knock your bally block off for that”. He steamed in and engaged the errant Bee in a gladiatorial contest of the most virulent violence to exact retribution on behalf of his fallen Caledonian comrade. This was in stark contrast to the “fight” between Bayley Harewood and Baird moments earlier. This was a cuddle fest with the two would be pugilists eventually falling over without a blow exchanged. Things then kicked off with other players becoming involved, the highlight of which was the demolition of a lidless Josh Martin by Zac Milton. Eventually it all simmered down and penalties were doled out. Needless to saying there were several chucking out of game penalties, least of all to Galazzi who skated from the box to the locker room with gestures to the crowd indicating that he was very proud of his conduct. It’s a pity that the officials were powerless to impose the death penalty on him as a 5 + game and nothing for the initial boarding offence didn’t seem remotely enough. Perhaps Hanging Judge Jeffries should be brought out of retirement to officiate at hockey matches in which Galazzi is playing.
Play restarted and the Bees grabbed a couple of late goals to make the scoreline look respectable. Gabaj assisted by Bradley and Webb for 7-5 and Stead assisted by Örnmarker for 7-6. But it was all to late. The final buzzer sounded and it was a Bison win.
Top Bananas were elected. The Bees man was not the opprobrious Galazzi, but instead Ryan Webb. Bison’s was two goal man Adam Harding. Cymru am byth.
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