Post by Jim H. on Mar 6, 2015 6:30:07 GMT -5
Against the backdrop of freezing rain and treacherous roads, Week 26 was played out in the serene quietude of the Louck’s Ice Center, the foul weather a sure presage of short benches manned by only the most dedicated of Old Bucks players. Blue and Red faced off again, like two bodies animated by one soul, and that soul consecrated to one pursuit: the after party, with a little hockey beforehand to whet the appetite for cold beer and pizza. Kenny remembered to leave his windshield wipers in the “up” position but forgot to stack the teams in Red’s favor and the result was nothing short of Blue’s biggest rout of the season, a 13-7 laugher in which Blue atoned for a whole season’s worth of inglorious defeats in one spectacular win, restoring its dignity and reviving the old Rich Corbett canard about “Red’s got nothin’". Rich Cerbone scored first for Blue, going coast-to-coast through a feeble fivesome of Kenny’s minions and demonstrating that, his advanced age notwithstanding, he still has wheels, whether for making steam up the wing or darting out of TJ’s to avoid chipping in for pizza. Then a nice set play mapped out on the bench with index fingers gave Brian Urban a goal and Blue the 2-0 lead. Then Paul Egan split the uprights to make it 3-0 Blue. Incidentally, it would take a pretty minute inspection of these annals to find another example of Paul Egan scoring, but it does happen, if only on the rarest occasions, and only after a sequence of the most improbable events, like a cat walking across a piano and pounding out the arpeggio to “Moonlight Sonata”. In this instance, Jim Heffern uncorked a skidding slapshot that caromed off of Kenny G.’s goalie stick causing the normally rock-steady netminder to fall heavily as if lassoed around the skates and land prone on his back outside the crease and far away from the goal. The rebound lighted on the stick of the aforementioned Egan, swathed in his customary plumpness, who checked the initial impulse to one-time the puck, and wisely so, given his penchant for whiffs, pratfalls, and other examples of the lack of consonance between his playing abilities and country of national origin. Furthermore, Red was in the midst of a four-man line change and this gave Paul more time to draw a bead on the goal than Clint Eastwood had at the end of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” when he shot Tuco off the hangman’s noose at a distance of 600 yards. And, finally, to perfectly align the planets in Paul’s favor, he had just that week spent a couple hours on the open goal simulator at Hockey Giant. Suffice it to say, with Paul’s goal a strain of doubt stole its way into Red’s confidence even as its legendary bravado pretended a complete unconcern.
There’s an old saying, “If you can’t stand the heat get out of Craig Allen’s hot tub.” Craig can stand the heat (and quaff sweet, liquory drinks at the same time) which is why he got Red’s first goal, camped out in front of the Blue net as Nick Gaudioso laid into him with his stick like he was chopping a hole in a smoking roof with an ax. Undeterred, Craig banged home a loose puck and Red was on board, albeit just barely, as Blue scored another four straight to extend its lead to 7-1. Alan Blankstein bagged two more for Red but Blue responded in kind and maintained a 9-3 lead into the part of the game where Doug Rendell takes twice as long to skate half as fast. In the meantime, Doc Millen, the ever-reliable Dean of the Red offense, whom we were sure was good for two or three goals, failed to light the lamp all game as if he was abstaining from scorning as some kind of obscure variant of a Lenten fast. If so, it was probably more challenging than Tim White giving up pastries at supper. Be that as it may, it was a long night for Kenny G., who was both the Red netminder and Rich Cerbone’s accomplice when it came to neglecting a certain transaction at the after party. Case in point: when Mark Timmons, motoring up the middle on one of his signature displays of awesomeness, ran the gauntlet of Kenny and Eddie only to be hooked from behind by Eddie at the blue line, he still scored, merely dragging Eddie along with him as he converted the breakaway into a goal. This was probably the point at which Kenny G. first conceived the notion: “There’s no way I’m shelling out for pizza at the after party.” Goalies, after all, do have their prerogatives. But it was not a good game for Red, who affected to despise Blue’s rude and unpolished play even as it was compelled to respect the results. Not even the play of Brian Pike, deservedly esteemed one of the best defensemen in Old Bucks; a player, indeed, whose reputation is scarcely inferior to Rich Cerbone’s in his prime circa 1994, could stem the torrent of Blue goals. He did assist, however, on a spectacular redirect by Alan Blankstein who was standing next to the Blue goal post, stick on the goal line, when he deflected a slap shot straight up—practically at a 90 degree right angle—into Big Ed's water bottle, launching it end-over-end through the air. It was a great goal—small consolation for Red—but a great goal nonetheless.
There’s an old saying, “If you can’t stand the heat get out of Craig Allen’s hot tub.” Craig can stand the heat (and quaff sweet, liquory drinks at the same time) which is why he got Red’s first goal, camped out in front of the Blue net as Nick Gaudioso laid into him with his stick like he was chopping a hole in a smoking roof with an ax. Undeterred, Craig banged home a loose puck and Red was on board, albeit just barely, as Blue scored another four straight to extend its lead to 7-1. Alan Blankstein bagged two more for Red but Blue responded in kind and maintained a 9-3 lead into the part of the game where Doug Rendell takes twice as long to skate half as fast. In the meantime, Doc Millen, the ever-reliable Dean of the Red offense, whom we were sure was good for two or three goals, failed to light the lamp all game as if he was abstaining from scorning as some kind of obscure variant of a Lenten fast. If so, it was probably more challenging than Tim White giving up pastries at supper. Be that as it may, it was a long night for Kenny G., who was both the Red netminder and Rich Cerbone’s accomplice when it came to neglecting a certain transaction at the after party. Case in point: when Mark Timmons, motoring up the middle on one of his signature displays of awesomeness, ran the gauntlet of Kenny and Eddie only to be hooked from behind by Eddie at the blue line, he still scored, merely dragging Eddie along with him as he converted the breakaway into a goal. This was probably the point at which Kenny G. first conceived the notion: “There’s no way I’m shelling out for pizza at the after party.” Goalies, after all, do have their prerogatives. But it was not a good game for Red, who affected to despise Blue’s rude and unpolished play even as it was compelled to respect the results. Not even the play of Brian Pike, deservedly esteemed one of the best defensemen in Old Bucks; a player, indeed, whose reputation is scarcely inferior to Rich Cerbone’s in his prime circa 1994, could stem the torrent of Blue goals. He did assist, however, on a spectacular redirect by Alan Blankstein who was standing next to the Blue goal post, stick on the goal line, when he deflected a slap shot straight up—practically at a 90 degree right angle—into Big Ed's water bottle, launching it end-over-end through the air. It was a great goal—small consolation for Red—but a great goal nonetheless.