Post by Jim H. on Mar 7, 2022 21:16:00 GMT -5
Week 24 marked not only the end of the Old Bucks season, but the end of Louck’s, the ice rink it had called home for over fifty years. The fate of Louck’s was sorely lamented by all. Cracked down its middle by a $300 million gift to Lawrenceville, it was now, like Poe’s House of Usher, destined to collapse into the tarn of progress. How fitting that Old Bucks should be the last hockey players to ever skate there. They were like the alpha and the omega with a little delta, epsilon and omicron thrown in for good measure.
During the week we consulted that grab bag of gossip for guys knowns as WhatsApp and came across a message from someone named “Kev” that he was going to skate on Sunday. The ensuing thread revealed that “Kev” was Saunders and he was asking what team he was going to skate for, Blue or Red? “Whoever loses the coin toss,” Paul Egan joked. But seriously, Old Bucks is not a zero sum game. What Red gains, Blue can gain too. So come Sunday Saunders was not so much picked by Red as explicitly excluded from Blue who was looking for more seasoned talent, players fast and loose with the puck—anal-retentive hyper wipers need not apply. Kenny made allowances for this and plucked players from the talent pool accordingly.
Both house goalies were back, so temperamentally different, the animated Vinnie for Blue, the stone-faced Ed Conrad for Red, their rivalry difficult to overstate. Red drew first blood, a goal we didn’t see but it was scored by Mike Tennant and described to us as “Garbage goal. All Frankie’s fault.” Andrew Tona tied the game only to have Ben David go low and stick-side on Vinnie to give Red the 2-1 lead. The Red defense, who had organized a watch party around the game, proceeded to watch Brian Urban bag two quick goals and Blue was up 3-2. When Rich Devlin made it 4-2, Blue was talking upset, meaning they were going to be really upset if they didn’t win this one.
Over the span of four more goals the pucks flew freely, or should we say Freiling since Bobby knotted the game at fives. Ben David snapped the tie and Red was up 6-5. The Bug Man, Mark Mayer, extended Red’s lead by two goals, 7-5 and hoped, were Red to win, that his goal would be embalmed in the amber of memory like a dragonfly or mosquito. Embalmed in Blue’s memory was the fact that they had only won seven games on the season. Perhaps, their bench wondered aloud, this was why Kenny never smiled when he played hockey—he was gnawed by remorse.
Blue’s prospects brightened when the steady plodder, Jim Heffern, scored and Rich Devlin followed suit, his laser from between the circles proving that Nick Faldo’s 60-second swing fix works for hockey too. A hushed tension gripped their bench as they nursed a 10-8 lead into the latter stages of the game. Then “chloroform on skates”, Joe Bruno, allowed Brian Pike to score two quick goals and the game was tied 10-10. Brian Urban got the go-ahead goal and the insurance goal and Blue went into their two-minute defense which is designed to contain Red to one Bob Freiling goal which was scored with 1:30 left to play. When the buzzer sounded we skated over to Vinnie.
“Congratulations, Vinnie!” we said. “Blue won 12-11!”
“13-11,” Vinnie replied.
We had to skip the afterparty to celebrate with the wife 18 years of nuptial bliss—an anniversary and commitment almost as old as our year 2000 commitment to Old Bucks. We remember thinking that joining Old Bucks was a lot less stressful than being joined in wedlock, especially after reading in some magazine that fifty percent of all marriages go on forever!
During the week we consulted that grab bag of gossip for guys knowns as WhatsApp and came across a message from someone named “Kev” that he was going to skate on Sunday. The ensuing thread revealed that “Kev” was Saunders and he was asking what team he was going to skate for, Blue or Red? “Whoever loses the coin toss,” Paul Egan joked. But seriously, Old Bucks is not a zero sum game. What Red gains, Blue can gain too. So come Sunday Saunders was not so much picked by Red as explicitly excluded from Blue who was looking for more seasoned talent, players fast and loose with the puck—anal-retentive hyper wipers need not apply. Kenny made allowances for this and plucked players from the talent pool accordingly.
Both house goalies were back, so temperamentally different, the animated Vinnie for Blue, the stone-faced Ed Conrad for Red, their rivalry difficult to overstate. Red drew first blood, a goal we didn’t see but it was scored by Mike Tennant and described to us as “Garbage goal. All Frankie’s fault.” Andrew Tona tied the game only to have Ben David go low and stick-side on Vinnie to give Red the 2-1 lead. The Red defense, who had organized a watch party around the game, proceeded to watch Brian Urban bag two quick goals and Blue was up 3-2. When Rich Devlin made it 4-2, Blue was talking upset, meaning they were going to be really upset if they didn’t win this one.
Over the span of four more goals the pucks flew freely, or should we say Freiling since Bobby knotted the game at fives. Ben David snapped the tie and Red was up 6-5. The Bug Man, Mark Mayer, extended Red’s lead by two goals, 7-5 and hoped, were Red to win, that his goal would be embalmed in the amber of memory like a dragonfly or mosquito. Embalmed in Blue’s memory was the fact that they had only won seven games on the season. Perhaps, their bench wondered aloud, this was why Kenny never smiled when he played hockey—he was gnawed by remorse.
Blue’s prospects brightened when the steady plodder, Jim Heffern, scored and Rich Devlin followed suit, his laser from between the circles proving that Nick Faldo’s 60-second swing fix works for hockey too. A hushed tension gripped their bench as they nursed a 10-8 lead into the latter stages of the game. Then “chloroform on skates”, Joe Bruno, allowed Brian Pike to score two quick goals and the game was tied 10-10. Brian Urban got the go-ahead goal and the insurance goal and Blue went into their two-minute defense which is designed to contain Red to one Bob Freiling goal which was scored with 1:30 left to play. When the buzzer sounded we skated over to Vinnie.
“Congratulations, Vinnie!” we said. “Blue won 12-11!”
“13-11,” Vinnie replied.
We had to skip the afterparty to celebrate with the wife 18 years of nuptial bliss—an anniversary and commitment almost as old as our year 2000 commitment to Old Bucks. We remember thinking that joining Old Bucks was a lot less stressful than being joined in wedlock, especially after reading in some magazine that fifty percent of all marriages go on forever!