Post by Jim H. on Jan 30, 2015 6:36:38 GMT -5
Only Nick Gaudioso arrived later than us for Week 21. He had rushed out the door to leave time for getting his skates sharpened, but forgot his sticks and didn’t realize it until he was at the Pennington Circle where he stopped in at Wild Flowers for a couple beers before heading back home, slightly mellower than his usual mellow self, but retrieving the sticks nonetheless. Fortunately the game started 15 minutes late so neither he nor we missed much. Benches were packed—biggest crowd we’ve seen in a long time—with fifteen players to a side and two goalies, Eddie for Red and Dan Dougherty for Blue. For all its numbers the crowd was not exceptional in terms of who was there—just the usual players we’ve seen all year. Exceptional was the play of Red. Jonathan Millen scored first, bagging a cheapie from just inside the face-off circle, and though we’re obliged to mention Brooks Herr, for Blue, going five-hole on Eddie and knotting the game at ones, it does little to override the fact that Red scored six straight to go up 7-1. This was not an issue of someone surreptitiously letting air out of pucks; the only thing deflated in this game was Blue’s hope of ever catching Red this season, record-wise. Still at 7-1 Brooks Herr scored twice again, drilling a couple from the hash marks, and at 7-3 Blue could have conceivably come back if only their Youth Brigade would have flexed its muscles a little more. But a slow, sloppy line change involving a couple Hunts, perhaps an odd Bassert or two, allowed Rich Cerbone’s friend, Mark Timmons, to nonchalantly carry the puck into the Blue zone, tee one up from the top of the face-off circle and hole it as if the target he was aiming for was Tiger Woods' incisor and he was swinging a camera, not a hockey stick. When 8-3 became 10-4 and the Red cascade showed no sign of subsiding, Bob Freiling, skating Red, left the bench and donned his blue Kansas City Scouts jersey—a gift from his kids commemorating the first NHL game he ever attended, the Flyers v. the Scouts back in 1974. Kenny flipped out, first with shouts of “Bob is disavowed from Red!” and then with shouts of “Bob is disavowed from Old Bucks!”, with Kenny's use of “disavow” to mean “banish” a malapropism that only a doctor could commit. Still Kenny had a point. Bob holds the Old Bucks Award and with it comes the responsibility not to show up the rest of the club in so egregious a manner. But show everyone up he did, taking the ice on his first Blue shift and almost instantly becoming the catalyst in a three-way play involving himself, Dave Bassert and Rich Cerbone that made the score 10-5. His next shift Brian Urban scored, this time assisted by both himself and the other Bassert, Andrew. There’s no argument he makes everyone look better, including himself. His next-to-last-shift he broke even plus/minus wise but ended the game with bang, scoring two goals and making a blowout game (10-4 without him) a real squeaker (6-5 with him). Whether he’ll be able to patch things up with Kenny is another issue altogether. Paul Egan, who grew up on an island, had some good advice for Bobby after the game: Don’t burn your bridges.