Post by Jim H. on Feb 27, 2023 19:21:11 GMT -5
In Chamonix baby!
That’s how Paul Egan informed the club he would not be playing in Week 22. Thus he subscribes to the Old Bucks belief that you should never bottle up your emotions, even when messaging on an app. We think an Alps getaway will do him a world of good. Not just the skiing, but Paul really loves his French Reds—as long as they’re not named Ben David and chasing him through the N zone with a hockey stick. He's probably having a glass right now, the frostiness of its bouquet tempered by the warm glow of an infrared patio heater. Out he stares at the Mont Blanc massif—that granite concatenation of peaks that belies every textbook lesson that says the Earth is really smoother than a billiard ball. Mont Blanc itself is disputed territory, claimed since time immemorial by both France and Italy. Personally we think it’s French just because it’s called by its French name Mont Blanc and not by the Italian Monteverdi Lupisella. But it still reminds us a lot of Old Bucks: Red and Blue forever contending over the same peak—the honor of being called the best in the club. “Why can’t you just share?” the wives always suggest. Impossible. Old Bucks shares only two things—tape and whiskey.
It was hard finding the locker room. Usually we just follow the jovial peals of merriment echoing through the door. But there were so few skaters an eerie quietude obtained that reminded us of the conundrum: “If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one around to hear it, does that mean it fell at a meeting of mega-donors for Trump ’24?” Finally we tried the right door and found a seat among the many that were available. We noticed Nick Gaudioso’s T-shirt. It read,
Sir Ernest Shackleton was able to cross Antarctica in -76 degree weather because of one thing.
We asked Nick what was the one thing Shackleton had when he crossed Antarctica? He looked at us more puzzled than Joe McNamara looks when he’s trying to tie a knot in his bandana. Nick had no idea what we were talking about. Then he noticed his T-shirt and laughed saying firemen get a lot of freebies from bars. Mark Herr read the answer on the back: Bass Ale. So we were wrong. Our guess was a mixture of lemon water and celery juice.
As soon as Brian posted the teams the scouting report for Red said, “Solid team. Good size. Defense a bit of a liability.” But that’s only because its defense was still contaminated with trace amounts of Paul Egan. Otherwise it was fine as Chris Chairmonte pinched from the point and funneled a nice pass out front to Andrew Tona who tapped it home to give Red the 1-0 lead. Blue tied the game when Nick Gaudioso dished to Bob Freiling who sent the puck caroming off the stick of Joe Herbert for the easy equalizer. Tic-tac-toe you say? Get with the times: Click-ship-delivered! Joe Herbert scored again and we thought, “Lightning strikes twice.” Then he scored again and we thought, “Pretty flashy—but still needs a mullet if he wants to be Jagr.” Then he scored again and we thought, “If this is the way unassimilable foreigners assimilate, then we’re all for it!”
Joe came off the ice for a breather. “I really love this soft ice!” he exclaimed, noting that his dangling skills improve if the friction coefficient on the puck is greater than two Newtons. Two shifts later he scored his fifth goal to snap a 4-4 tie we wondered if this was the same Joe who in Week 1 strained his back lifting his hockey bag and begged off defense because—and we quote, “I don’t skate backwards very well.” And then when Joe went hard to the net and banked a fat rebound off the post for his sixth goal of the game we could only think “Glory hound—but we won’t hold it against him” before registering the deed with the Old Bucks Preservation Trust under the record for Most Consecutive Goals to Start a Game. Incredibly with all Joe’s effort Red was still keeping pace and the game was tied 6-6. This game was going down to the wire.
Blue built an 8-6 lead on two non-Joe Herbert goals as Joe himself was starting to betray every symptom of fatigue, not excluding telling his teammates “I feel really tired.” There was the requisite controversy as Tim White barreled up to Eli (in the Blue goal) deked him out, but just caught the post with the shot before Eli smothered the puck with his back. The Red bench cheered as Tim broke into his home run trot like he was Jim Thome and he had just taken Pedro Martinez deep in Fenway. Marty, withal, was in the scorer’s box and counted the goal but it was NO GOAL! Alan Blankstein said it best: “Marty thinks if he couldn’t stop the shot then nobody can.”
So Red essentially played for a half hour thinking the score was 8-7 when it was 8-6. When they did make it 8-7 they thought it was 8-8 (if you have an abacus now’s the time to grab it). Then Andrew Tona roofed the puck right over a butterflied Eli; there was a loud CLANG! and the puck caromed right back into play. Red claimed the puck hit the center stanchion inside the goal, but both Jim Heffern’s sisters said after the game it was all crossbar—so that goal was retroactively waived off. Red was still down 8-7 with minutes to play. Just when Dan Dougherty was regretting the fact that he can never win as an Old Bucks goalie, just as he was consoling himself with the thought: “Well, at least I stopped 75 shots—FROM BOB FREILING!!!” Red ran an indecipherable play of such staggering complexity its telltale genius was only deduced from the end result: Rich Cerbone catching Eli flat-footed with a skittering shot from just inside the blue line.
Red wasn’t done. Moments later Ryan Crowell, that diminutive, disheveled Phil Esposito look-alike in the Black Hawks jersey went mano a mano with Steve Souza in front of the Blue goal and, suffice it to say, the player whose eyeglasses were NOT knocked askew on the play scored the game-winning goal. But that’s Blue for ya. It’s defeats are as spectacular as its victories and this one was a doozy.
That’s how Paul Egan informed the club he would not be playing in Week 22. Thus he subscribes to the Old Bucks belief that you should never bottle up your emotions, even when messaging on an app. We think an Alps getaway will do him a world of good. Not just the skiing, but Paul really loves his French Reds—as long as they’re not named Ben David and chasing him through the N zone with a hockey stick. He's probably having a glass right now, the frostiness of its bouquet tempered by the warm glow of an infrared patio heater. Out he stares at the Mont Blanc massif—that granite concatenation of peaks that belies every textbook lesson that says the Earth is really smoother than a billiard ball. Mont Blanc itself is disputed territory, claimed since time immemorial by both France and Italy. Personally we think it’s French just because it’s called by its French name Mont Blanc and not by the Italian Monteverdi Lupisella. But it still reminds us a lot of Old Bucks: Red and Blue forever contending over the same peak—the honor of being called the best in the club. “Why can’t you just share?” the wives always suggest. Impossible. Old Bucks shares only two things—tape and whiskey.
It was hard finding the locker room. Usually we just follow the jovial peals of merriment echoing through the door. But there were so few skaters an eerie quietude obtained that reminded us of the conundrum: “If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one around to hear it, does that mean it fell at a meeting of mega-donors for Trump ’24?” Finally we tried the right door and found a seat among the many that were available. We noticed Nick Gaudioso’s T-shirt. It read,
Sir Ernest Shackleton was able to cross Antarctica in -76 degree weather because of one thing.
We asked Nick what was the one thing Shackleton had when he crossed Antarctica? He looked at us more puzzled than Joe McNamara looks when he’s trying to tie a knot in his bandana. Nick had no idea what we were talking about. Then he noticed his T-shirt and laughed saying firemen get a lot of freebies from bars. Mark Herr read the answer on the back: Bass Ale. So we were wrong. Our guess was a mixture of lemon water and celery juice.
As soon as Brian posted the teams the scouting report for Red said, “Solid team. Good size. Defense a bit of a liability.” But that’s only because its defense was still contaminated with trace amounts of Paul Egan. Otherwise it was fine as Chris Chairmonte pinched from the point and funneled a nice pass out front to Andrew Tona who tapped it home to give Red the 1-0 lead. Blue tied the game when Nick Gaudioso dished to Bob Freiling who sent the puck caroming off the stick of Joe Herbert for the easy equalizer. Tic-tac-toe you say? Get with the times: Click-ship-delivered! Joe Herbert scored again and we thought, “Lightning strikes twice.” Then he scored again and we thought, “Pretty flashy—but still needs a mullet if he wants to be Jagr.” Then he scored again and we thought, “If this is the way unassimilable foreigners assimilate, then we’re all for it!”
Joe came off the ice for a breather. “I really love this soft ice!” he exclaimed, noting that his dangling skills improve if the friction coefficient on the puck is greater than two Newtons. Two shifts later he scored his fifth goal to snap a 4-4 tie we wondered if this was the same Joe who in Week 1 strained his back lifting his hockey bag and begged off defense because—and we quote, “I don’t skate backwards very well.” And then when Joe went hard to the net and banked a fat rebound off the post for his sixth goal of the game we could only think “Glory hound—but we won’t hold it against him” before registering the deed with the Old Bucks Preservation Trust under the record for Most Consecutive Goals to Start a Game. Incredibly with all Joe’s effort Red was still keeping pace and the game was tied 6-6. This game was going down to the wire.
Blue built an 8-6 lead on two non-Joe Herbert goals as Joe himself was starting to betray every symptom of fatigue, not excluding telling his teammates “I feel really tired.” There was the requisite controversy as Tim White barreled up to Eli (in the Blue goal) deked him out, but just caught the post with the shot before Eli smothered the puck with his back. The Red bench cheered as Tim broke into his home run trot like he was Jim Thome and he had just taken Pedro Martinez deep in Fenway. Marty, withal, was in the scorer’s box and counted the goal but it was NO GOAL! Alan Blankstein said it best: “Marty thinks if he couldn’t stop the shot then nobody can.”
So Red essentially played for a half hour thinking the score was 8-7 when it was 8-6. When they did make it 8-7 they thought it was 8-8 (if you have an abacus now’s the time to grab it). Then Andrew Tona roofed the puck right over a butterflied Eli; there was a loud CLANG! and the puck caromed right back into play. Red claimed the puck hit the center stanchion inside the goal, but both Jim Heffern’s sisters said after the game it was all crossbar—so that goal was retroactively waived off. Red was still down 8-7 with minutes to play. Just when Dan Dougherty was regretting the fact that he can never win as an Old Bucks goalie, just as he was consoling himself with the thought: “Well, at least I stopped 75 shots—FROM BOB FREILING!!!” Red ran an indecipherable play of such staggering complexity its telltale genius was only deduced from the end result: Rich Cerbone catching Eli flat-footed with a skittering shot from just inside the blue line.
Red wasn’t done. Moments later Ryan Crowell, that diminutive, disheveled Phil Esposito look-alike in the Black Hawks jersey went mano a mano with Steve Souza in front of the Blue goal and, suffice it to say, the player whose eyeglasses were NOT knocked askew on the play scored the game-winning goal. But that’s Blue for ya. It’s defeats are as spectacular as its victories and this one was a doozy.
