Post by Old Bucks Admin on Mar 19, 2011 7:28:22 GMT -5
March Madness started early this year—at least for Old Bucks. With the rink closing early to have its warming pad replaced, Week 23 became the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four, and Championship game all rolled into one. With a rare Friday night game adding to the drama, Red led in the standings with 10 wins, 9 losses and three ties. Thus, they were poised to either win the season outright or, barring a tie, share the honor with Blue. Kenny went to great lengths to provide balanced teams for the occasion, and one might argue he even tilted the rosters in Blue’s favor. His most conspicuous move was assigning Tim White to Blue. Tim White never skates Blue. But if offense could come in a horse pill, and ingested by an entire team, Tim White would be prescribed every time.
Blue also had Bob Freiling but he had eaten sauerkraut before the game which is as debilitating to Rangerman as kryptonite is to Superman. It gave him a tummy ache and his face wore a pinched expression each time his gut was pierced by a pang of liquefied cabbage converting to methane. Blue was also without Alex Cerbone who was three weeks into a new romance and already succumbing to the servile pose of the accommodating boyfriend, less disposed to play hockey than avoid a quarrel. Speaking of “accommodating”, Paul Egan couldn’t make the game either. He had to be on hand for a conference call with his factory in Shanghai. That’s Paul Egan for you. One week the wife demands he come home for dinner and the next the Chinese demand he be on hand for a conference call. Where’s the backbone in that? It must be a Canadian thing.
Blue scored the game’s first goal boxer-style—a windmill of punches that somehow landed one home, by whom we couldn’t tell. That their first goal was more a team effort attested to Blue’s main strength—team work. They sought to ground Red down in the crucible of their offense, most of which ran through Bob Freiling, but still saw goals, in the beginning, by Tim White, Rich Cerbone, and Diaz, in addition to Freiling. On defense they did the risky, counter-intuitive thing, putting their two best guys, Rich Cerbone and Brian Urban, on one line, and the dubious Jim Heffern and Doug Rendell on another. Jim Heffern played as erratically as ever; on one play he tried to intercept a pass in the neutral zone, missed, and gave up the breakaway to Jonathan Millen, who scored. This cost Jim a searing glare of contempt from Marty. Shortly thereafter he tried to bat away a Hughie wrist shot, but deflected the puck right onto the stick of the lynx-eyed Scoop, who buried it in the back of the net. This earned Jim another glare from Marty, in addition to a loudly snorted oath. The touchy netminder was in rare form.
Blue was about to replace Jim on defense with Dave Hunt, but Dave forestalled this move by scoring a goal and putting Blue up 6-4 midway through the game. It stayed 6-4 for a good ten minutes, neither team showing any quarter to the other, and both raining fire on the respective goals. Something had to give and soon it did; Jim Heffern made a long outlet pass to Saunders, who, just barely onsides, managed to corral the rolling puck and sprint for the Red goal. He looked like a dung beetle pushing before him his piece of dung while all of a flutter that there were five other beetles wanting the same piece of dung. He skated up to Kenny G. and did not falter, deking him out as one unhaired combatant to another. This put Blue up 7-4. Moments later, Bob Freiling, nearly delirious from the toxic effects of overindulging in sauerkraut, expended his last ounce of energy to force a turnover in the neutral zone and drive for the Red goal, pounding it past Kenny and extending the lead to 8-4. Bob would spend the next several shifts pleading with someone of defense to yield him their spot so he could rest in the manner of Doug Rendell, lazily loitering around the blue line. Brian Urban finally acquiesced, just to shut him up.
Blue began to score with metronome regularity. Up 10-4, they yielded one goal to John Lupisella and Red made a feeble attempt to mount a comeback. A scant two minutes later Mike Robbins, for Red, had a flat out breakaway, tried as usual to go five hole on Marty, but the netminder, wise to his inclinations, plugged the gap with the blade of his stick and batted the puck away. That was it for Red. Thereafter Blue fell in with the broad-axes of their hockey sticks and chopped Red to pieces. Only John Lupisella eluded them, scoring two more goals in Red’s ultimate 17-10 defeat. Thus ended the season for Old Bucks in a tie, both teams recording records of 10-10-3. Kenny, listening for once to the voice of conscience, did the honorable thing, sacrificing Red’s championship hopes on the altar of fair play.
At the invitation of Nick Swift, a captain in the Pennington Fire Department, the club gathered Saturday night at the fire house for its annual year-end bash. Turnout was good and included wives, children, and girlfriends. The two Petrine Rocks of Old Bucks were there, Angie and Bill McDowell—and Bob Melby too, whom we never had the pleasure of skating with, but met once at Bill’s iced-over pond. To Old Bucks history buffs, Bob was Angie’s predecessor running the club and listening to him tell stories Saturday night was about as nostalgic as holding in your hands a KOHO hockey stick. Speaking of which, there was a large framed photograph of the club taken in ’75 on one of the tables. Angie and Bill were easy to pick out; they looked positively steeped in youthful vim and vigor; what Charlie Sheen would call their “Adonis DNA” still very much in evidence. Angie’s stick had about thirty brass tacks hammered into the shaft—one for each goal he had scored that year.
The Thomas brothers, too, made it to the party, taking us back to another bygone era when they both skated regularly with the club—and we could drink beer in the locker rooms. Eddie and Craig Allen were notably absent but they weren’t expected as it was UFC Fight Night at Applebee’s. Saunders made the most dashing entrance of all, holding in his hands a woven straw wine tote and two crystal goblets. The first thing he did was remove a bottle of McWilliams Shiraz from the wine tote and open it with a pearl-handled corkscrew. As he poured glasses for himself and Janet he looked the true son of Bacchus, as effete as any epicure that ever graced the olive groves of ancient Greece sighing, “Cup me. I thirst,” while plucking a lyre. Truly he makes up for in palate what he lacks in hair. Paul Egan, meantime, was kicking himself. A despiser of beer, he had wanted desperately to bring a bottle of wine but was afraid he’d look like a total geek had he done so. What Paul didn’t know was that even Saunders bringing wine would not have protected him from looking like a total geek and probably would have made it doubly more apparent.
The club had a lot of catching up to do, not having chatted over beers since Week 15. They fairly washed their brains in beer and dried them in the fiery kiln of Rich Cerbone’s wings. The spread was enormous: several varieties of chicken, sausage, meatballs, pasta, and salads, in addition to rice pudding for dessert. The pizza didn’t arrive until an hour later, well after everyone had gorged themselves on viands and beer. It went virtually untouched, leading some to suspect a ploy on Kenny’s part: that he has one of those giant freezers in his basement and he coveted the chance to stock it with a year’s supply of leftover pizza. We offered to take a pizza home, but Kenny wanted eleven bucks for it so we declined.
The awards ceremony, usually the highlight of the evening, was dramatically upstaged by a marriage proposal. It caught everyone off guard, not the least of whom Angie, who unwittingly prompted it. Angie merely announced that after the awards the club would pose for a photograph, and after this, all the wives and girlfriends would pose. Judging by what happened next, Saunders’ girlfriend, Janet, fortified with two glasses of Shiraz, saw in the phrase “wives and girlfriends” an opportunity to initiate the process by which the latter becomes the former. She got down on one knee, and clasping Saunders’ hands in her own, asked with baited breath, “Will you marry me?” For once Saunders was at a loss for words. He looked ashen at first, and then his face turned as ruddy as one of Bill McDowell’s apples as the flashes from camera phones went off like a crush a paparazzi outside a Hollywood premiere. It was only fitting that tears welled in his eyes as he recovered enough of his faculties to utter an endearing, “I’ll think about it.”
Bob Freiling earned the “Hole in the Stick” award for merely netting 50 goals on the year, when he could have easily netted 100 had he played to his potential (and left off supping on sauerkraut). Doug Rendell got the “Mike the Czech” award, not just for having the longest shifts, but for traversing the least amount of ice while doing so. Doug was not there to accept the award in person; he was probably home sitting in his Laz-E-Boy recliner—what he calls his “other blue line”. Jim Heffern, once again reclaimed the “Hanger” award after losing it last year to Larry Johnson. He’s now won the award two out of the last three years. Some say he is en route to establishing himself as one the great hangers in Old Bucks history; and it’s no shame to Gretsky that the neutral zone is now known as Jim’s “office”. Finally Brian Urban, as this year’s living incarnation of all the lofty ideals embodied in the club, got the coveted “Old Bucks” award—at 31 the youngest member ever to be so honored, and by extension, the only one who can legitimately hang the award upside down.
We left the party around 10 p.m. with a sizable clutch of the club still lingering, drinking beer in boisterous expectation of a company of fireman showing up to pull down the room’s ceiling-mounted screen and start showing, via a movie projector, stag films from the 1970s. As we left the last person we heard was Paul Egan, who had buttonholed a couple people in a corner for purposes of explaining away his weak showing on the ice this year. “That whole warming pad issue totally threw me off,” he said. “How can you establish any kind of timing when one patch of ice is ten degrees and another patch is fifteen degrees? It’s like trying to play tennis on a court that’s clay in one area, grass in another, and asphalt in another. It’s impossible—even for a Canadian. Wait until you see me at Iceland. Presumably their warming pad works. I’m gonna be putting up Bob Freiling-type stats. You’ll see.”
Blue also had Bob Freiling but he had eaten sauerkraut before the game which is as debilitating to Rangerman as kryptonite is to Superman. It gave him a tummy ache and his face wore a pinched expression each time his gut was pierced by a pang of liquefied cabbage converting to methane. Blue was also without Alex Cerbone who was three weeks into a new romance and already succumbing to the servile pose of the accommodating boyfriend, less disposed to play hockey than avoid a quarrel. Speaking of “accommodating”, Paul Egan couldn’t make the game either. He had to be on hand for a conference call with his factory in Shanghai. That’s Paul Egan for you. One week the wife demands he come home for dinner and the next the Chinese demand he be on hand for a conference call. Where’s the backbone in that? It must be a Canadian thing.
Blue scored the game’s first goal boxer-style—a windmill of punches that somehow landed one home, by whom we couldn’t tell. That their first goal was more a team effort attested to Blue’s main strength—team work. They sought to ground Red down in the crucible of their offense, most of which ran through Bob Freiling, but still saw goals, in the beginning, by Tim White, Rich Cerbone, and Diaz, in addition to Freiling. On defense they did the risky, counter-intuitive thing, putting their two best guys, Rich Cerbone and Brian Urban, on one line, and the dubious Jim Heffern and Doug Rendell on another. Jim Heffern played as erratically as ever; on one play he tried to intercept a pass in the neutral zone, missed, and gave up the breakaway to Jonathan Millen, who scored. This cost Jim a searing glare of contempt from Marty. Shortly thereafter he tried to bat away a Hughie wrist shot, but deflected the puck right onto the stick of the lynx-eyed Scoop, who buried it in the back of the net. This earned Jim another glare from Marty, in addition to a loudly snorted oath. The touchy netminder was in rare form.
Blue was about to replace Jim on defense with Dave Hunt, but Dave forestalled this move by scoring a goal and putting Blue up 6-4 midway through the game. It stayed 6-4 for a good ten minutes, neither team showing any quarter to the other, and both raining fire on the respective goals. Something had to give and soon it did; Jim Heffern made a long outlet pass to Saunders, who, just barely onsides, managed to corral the rolling puck and sprint for the Red goal. He looked like a dung beetle pushing before him his piece of dung while all of a flutter that there were five other beetles wanting the same piece of dung. He skated up to Kenny G. and did not falter, deking him out as one unhaired combatant to another. This put Blue up 7-4. Moments later, Bob Freiling, nearly delirious from the toxic effects of overindulging in sauerkraut, expended his last ounce of energy to force a turnover in the neutral zone and drive for the Red goal, pounding it past Kenny and extending the lead to 8-4. Bob would spend the next several shifts pleading with someone of defense to yield him their spot so he could rest in the manner of Doug Rendell, lazily loitering around the blue line. Brian Urban finally acquiesced, just to shut him up.
Blue began to score with metronome regularity. Up 10-4, they yielded one goal to John Lupisella and Red made a feeble attempt to mount a comeback. A scant two minutes later Mike Robbins, for Red, had a flat out breakaway, tried as usual to go five hole on Marty, but the netminder, wise to his inclinations, plugged the gap with the blade of his stick and batted the puck away. That was it for Red. Thereafter Blue fell in with the broad-axes of their hockey sticks and chopped Red to pieces. Only John Lupisella eluded them, scoring two more goals in Red’s ultimate 17-10 defeat. Thus ended the season for Old Bucks in a tie, both teams recording records of 10-10-3. Kenny, listening for once to the voice of conscience, did the honorable thing, sacrificing Red’s championship hopes on the altar of fair play.
At the invitation of Nick Swift, a captain in the Pennington Fire Department, the club gathered Saturday night at the fire house for its annual year-end bash. Turnout was good and included wives, children, and girlfriends. The two Petrine Rocks of Old Bucks were there, Angie and Bill McDowell—and Bob Melby too, whom we never had the pleasure of skating with, but met once at Bill’s iced-over pond. To Old Bucks history buffs, Bob was Angie’s predecessor running the club and listening to him tell stories Saturday night was about as nostalgic as holding in your hands a KOHO hockey stick. Speaking of which, there was a large framed photograph of the club taken in ’75 on one of the tables. Angie and Bill were easy to pick out; they looked positively steeped in youthful vim and vigor; what Charlie Sheen would call their “Adonis DNA” still very much in evidence. Angie’s stick had about thirty brass tacks hammered into the shaft—one for each goal he had scored that year.
The Thomas brothers, too, made it to the party, taking us back to another bygone era when they both skated regularly with the club—and we could drink beer in the locker rooms. Eddie and Craig Allen were notably absent but they weren’t expected as it was UFC Fight Night at Applebee’s. Saunders made the most dashing entrance of all, holding in his hands a woven straw wine tote and two crystal goblets. The first thing he did was remove a bottle of McWilliams Shiraz from the wine tote and open it with a pearl-handled corkscrew. As he poured glasses for himself and Janet he looked the true son of Bacchus, as effete as any epicure that ever graced the olive groves of ancient Greece sighing, “Cup me. I thirst,” while plucking a lyre. Truly he makes up for in palate what he lacks in hair. Paul Egan, meantime, was kicking himself. A despiser of beer, he had wanted desperately to bring a bottle of wine but was afraid he’d look like a total geek had he done so. What Paul didn’t know was that even Saunders bringing wine would not have protected him from looking like a total geek and probably would have made it doubly more apparent.
The club had a lot of catching up to do, not having chatted over beers since Week 15. They fairly washed their brains in beer and dried them in the fiery kiln of Rich Cerbone’s wings. The spread was enormous: several varieties of chicken, sausage, meatballs, pasta, and salads, in addition to rice pudding for dessert. The pizza didn’t arrive until an hour later, well after everyone had gorged themselves on viands and beer. It went virtually untouched, leading some to suspect a ploy on Kenny’s part: that he has one of those giant freezers in his basement and he coveted the chance to stock it with a year’s supply of leftover pizza. We offered to take a pizza home, but Kenny wanted eleven bucks for it so we declined.
The awards ceremony, usually the highlight of the evening, was dramatically upstaged by a marriage proposal. It caught everyone off guard, not the least of whom Angie, who unwittingly prompted it. Angie merely announced that after the awards the club would pose for a photograph, and after this, all the wives and girlfriends would pose. Judging by what happened next, Saunders’ girlfriend, Janet, fortified with two glasses of Shiraz, saw in the phrase “wives and girlfriends” an opportunity to initiate the process by which the latter becomes the former. She got down on one knee, and clasping Saunders’ hands in her own, asked with baited breath, “Will you marry me?” For once Saunders was at a loss for words. He looked ashen at first, and then his face turned as ruddy as one of Bill McDowell’s apples as the flashes from camera phones went off like a crush a paparazzi outside a Hollywood premiere. It was only fitting that tears welled in his eyes as he recovered enough of his faculties to utter an endearing, “I’ll think about it.”
Bob Freiling earned the “Hole in the Stick” award for merely netting 50 goals on the year, when he could have easily netted 100 had he played to his potential (and left off supping on sauerkraut). Doug Rendell got the “Mike the Czech” award, not just for having the longest shifts, but for traversing the least amount of ice while doing so. Doug was not there to accept the award in person; he was probably home sitting in his Laz-E-Boy recliner—what he calls his “other blue line”. Jim Heffern, once again reclaimed the “Hanger” award after losing it last year to Larry Johnson. He’s now won the award two out of the last three years. Some say he is en route to establishing himself as one the great hangers in Old Bucks history; and it’s no shame to Gretsky that the neutral zone is now known as Jim’s “office”. Finally Brian Urban, as this year’s living incarnation of all the lofty ideals embodied in the club, got the coveted “Old Bucks” award—at 31 the youngest member ever to be so honored, and by extension, the only one who can legitimately hang the award upside down.
We left the party around 10 p.m. with a sizable clutch of the club still lingering, drinking beer in boisterous expectation of a company of fireman showing up to pull down the room’s ceiling-mounted screen and start showing, via a movie projector, stag films from the 1970s. As we left the last person we heard was Paul Egan, who had buttonholed a couple people in a corner for purposes of explaining away his weak showing on the ice this year. “That whole warming pad issue totally threw me off,” he said. “How can you establish any kind of timing when one patch of ice is ten degrees and another patch is fifteen degrees? It’s like trying to play tennis on a court that’s clay in one area, grass in another, and asphalt in another. It’s impossible—even for a Canadian. Wait until you see me at Iceland. Presumably their warming pad works. I’m gonna be putting up Bob Freiling-type stats. You’ll see.”