Post by Old Bucks Admin on Feb 14, 2013 7:30:03 GMT -5
Week 21 had the look and feel of a spaghetti western with Kenny the absentee sheriff, Old Bucks the town overrun by a pack of bullies led by George Schott, and John Diaz emerging from the parking lot’s shadows chomping on a cigar and wearing a serape, the archetypical Defender of the Defenseless, a dread-inspiring sight if there ever was one. It was all Brian Urban needed to do the unthinkably brazen act of coaxing Mike Robbins onto the Blue bench with that most timorous of all timorous pleas, “But Red has Bob Freiling!” which Mike answered like a summons, donning his Oilers jersey which is not so much Blue as “Not Red”. Red rolled the dice on Vinnie in goal, figuring he’d be, if not a tough read, at least a diverting one. Vinnie was in for Kenny G. and Old Bucks welcomed him back into its ample bosom as if he were a rare and brightly plumaged bird rescued from the Grundy cage. He faced off against Marty, all in black, like a crow.
Red began with a fusillade of shots, pounding Marty to the tune of three quick goals, one from Jason Millen, one from Bob Freiling and one from the Freiling scion who had no trouble picking his way through a very porous neutral zone to set up a monster of a wrister from just inside the blue line. Blue was flummoxed, to say the least, and Rich Cerbone admonished the bench that when “those two” are on the ice they really have to backcheck, referring to a certain Diaz/Rendell combo that makes a ready scapegoat whenever Blue stinks up the ice. No scapegoats were needed, however, as Blue in the course of three frenzied shifts struck back, first tying the game with goals by Brian Urban, Diaz and George Bassert and then going ahead on a nifty Diaz redirection off a Sousa slapshot. Nor was Blue done wreaking havoc on a Red defense that lacked John Quirinale, Eddie and the iron-willed Kenny who was wielding a different kind of iron down in Florida. Rich Devlin set the example, playing like a man who had walked under a ladder seven years ago and was just now seeing his run of bad luck come to an end. His first goal was a dribbler that Vinnie fanned on, his second a masterful tip off a Rich Cerbone shot, his third an indecipherable play of staggering complexity whose genius can only be inferred from the end result: Rich wrapping around the net and richocheting the puck off the skate of a butterflied Vinnie. He was the impetus behind a dazzling sequence of events that broke the game wide open for Blue, a surge in offense so big Vinnie went from his baptism of fire to extreme unction before the game was three-quarters done.
In the meantime the Red offense coughed and sputtered with an assortment of goals as odd as they were paltry: Jason Millen to John Lupisella—and Bob Freiling to, of all people, Huck Fairman who before he lit the lamp dutifully checked to make sure the puck was synthetic rubber and not harvested from the endangered “hevea brasilensius”. Blue, already with a sizeable lead, weighed smugly the futility implied by Lupisella and Fairman as offensive catalysts, and cannily deployed their famous “four corners offense” a delaying tactic that is actually more a combination of the neutral zone trap and Marty pretending to have numerous wardrobe malfunctions. Counter-intuitively this produced more Blue goals, including a Robbins to Diaz rip from the top of the slot, and a Robbins rebound from a Fred Diaz shot. About the time Craig Allen left the game, a casualty to the hard-to-bear shamefacedness induced by such a team-wide lack of effort, Red fortunes hit their nadir with Paul Egan, inconspicuously lolling next to the Red bench, getting the puck from a neutral zone turnover and taking off for the Red goal as if a monkey with spurs was clinging to his back and digging into his muffin top. Vinnie came out to cut off the angle but Paul rifled a bottle-popper right over his shoulder, and then peeled away from the goal like a fighter jet after a sortie. This was more than Red pride could bear and their grumbling became more sinister, like Tim White suggesting they put George Schott back on defense if only to bang somebody and make a statement. But the team lapsed once again into indifference and resigned themselves to defeat, giving ear in the game’s final moments to Nick Swift and his account of the previous night’s Firehouse Installation Dinner, which is kind of like a big stag party—only with wives.
Week 21 Three Stars
3 – Paul Egan, for proving himself the Rex Reed of restaurant critics with this wicked appraisal of TJ’s: “It’s hard to know where the pizza ends and the box begins.”
2 – Jonathan Millen, for kicking the puck in his own goal and then trying to wave it off claiming Diaz had been on the ice for more than ten minutes.
1 – Jim Heffern, for his new-fangled “stick cam” which made up for in ingenuity what it lacked in feasibility.
Red began with a fusillade of shots, pounding Marty to the tune of three quick goals, one from Jason Millen, one from Bob Freiling and one from the Freiling scion who had no trouble picking his way through a very porous neutral zone to set up a monster of a wrister from just inside the blue line. Blue was flummoxed, to say the least, and Rich Cerbone admonished the bench that when “those two” are on the ice they really have to backcheck, referring to a certain Diaz/Rendell combo that makes a ready scapegoat whenever Blue stinks up the ice. No scapegoats were needed, however, as Blue in the course of three frenzied shifts struck back, first tying the game with goals by Brian Urban, Diaz and George Bassert and then going ahead on a nifty Diaz redirection off a Sousa slapshot. Nor was Blue done wreaking havoc on a Red defense that lacked John Quirinale, Eddie and the iron-willed Kenny who was wielding a different kind of iron down in Florida. Rich Devlin set the example, playing like a man who had walked under a ladder seven years ago and was just now seeing his run of bad luck come to an end. His first goal was a dribbler that Vinnie fanned on, his second a masterful tip off a Rich Cerbone shot, his third an indecipherable play of staggering complexity whose genius can only be inferred from the end result: Rich wrapping around the net and richocheting the puck off the skate of a butterflied Vinnie. He was the impetus behind a dazzling sequence of events that broke the game wide open for Blue, a surge in offense so big Vinnie went from his baptism of fire to extreme unction before the game was three-quarters done.
In the meantime the Red offense coughed and sputtered with an assortment of goals as odd as they were paltry: Jason Millen to John Lupisella—and Bob Freiling to, of all people, Huck Fairman who before he lit the lamp dutifully checked to make sure the puck was synthetic rubber and not harvested from the endangered “hevea brasilensius”. Blue, already with a sizeable lead, weighed smugly the futility implied by Lupisella and Fairman as offensive catalysts, and cannily deployed their famous “four corners offense” a delaying tactic that is actually more a combination of the neutral zone trap and Marty pretending to have numerous wardrobe malfunctions. Counter-intuitively this produced more Blue goals, including a Robbins to Diaz rip from the top of the slot, and a Robbins rebound from a Fred Diaz shot. About the time Craig Allen left the game, a casualty to the hard-to-bear shamefacedness induced by such a team-wide lack of effort, Red fortunes hit their nadir with Paul Egan, inconspicuously lolling next to the Red bench, getting the puck from a neutral zone turnover and taking off for the Red goal as if a monkey with spurs was clinging to his back and digging into his muffin top. Vinnie came out to cut off the angle but Paul rifled a bottle-popper right over his shoulder, and then peeled away from the goal like a fighter jet after a sortie. This was more than Red pride could bear and their grumbling became more sinister, like Tim White suggesting they put George Schott back on defense if only to bang somebody and make a statement. But the team lapsed once again into indifference and resigned themselves to defeat, giving ear in the game’s final moments to Nick Swift and his account of the previous night’s Firehouse Installation Dinner, which is kind of like a big stag party—only with wives.
Week 21 Three Stars
3 – Paul Egan, for proving himself the Rex Reed of restaurant critics with this wicked appraisal of TJ’s: “It’s hard to know where the pizza ends and the box begins.”
2 – Jonathan Millen, for kicking the puck in his own goal and then trying to wave it off claiming Diaz had been on the ice for more than ten minutes.
1 – Jim Heffern, for his new-fangled “stick cam” which made up for in ingenuity what it lacked in feasibility.