Post by Old Bucks Admin on Nov 26, 2010 6:15:34 GMT -5
A full moon had just crested the tree line as we pulled into the parking lot of the Louck’s Ice Center, throwing into stark, unmistakable relief the SILVERADO beneath the tailgate of Kip Thomas’s pickup truck. It gave notice that at least one old gunslinger was back in Dodge, and hinted that others were sure to follow. Perhaps it was a trick of the atmosphere; or more likely, a trick of our too vivid imagination, but we thought the moon had a slight, blue cast to it—like the most faded pinny in the Old Bucks wardrobe. We took it as a sign and asked ourselves what was as rare as a blue moon? The answer came to us instantly: Saunders bringing his own beer.
Droves of players came out for Week 8. We couldn’t tell whether it was for the holiday or because Kip was back. We counted four pairs of siblings alone: the Blanksteins, the Egners, the Thomases, and the Hefferns. Even Bill Hamill showed up for the first time since Week 1. That he didn’t bring Oliver seemed worse than an oversight, and bordered on negligence. Sure, one or two of the more ornery club members complained the deep benches would cut into their ice time, but on the whole the mood couldn’t have been peppier. It was just a matter of telling Paul Egan to pipe down or go back to Canada.
Showing up for the first time in Week 8—as Kip did—had its drawbacks. He was completely in Kenny’s thrall, without station, caste, or team. And who can say what private grudges lurk in Kenny’s disordered mind? All we know is that he put Kip in a red pinny. But did he then stack the teams in Blue’s favor as some sort of twisted plot to humiliate him? We’ll let the conspiracists sort this one out.
A game that would end with a whimper began with an Alan Blankstein bang, giving Red the lead 1-0. Red led 2-0 after Jim Heffern, playing defense for Blue, pulled a “Bob Freiling” backchecking and Eddie jumped on it, beating Jamie for the score. Jim, it should be noted, is the only player in Old Bucks who can play defenseman and still have trouble backchecking. Alex Cerbone threaded Marty’s five-hole to make it 2-1, but George Bassert responded, making it 3-1. Red at this point was the dominant team hands-down. But the chances they blew were folly-grade. Like when Scott Egner lured Jamie way out of goal and then set up John Lupisella for the open-netter. That John’s backhand went wide shows the pitfalls of putting a southpaw on right-wing. Worse, Mark Egner had an open-netter only to have his shot bounce off Craig Allen’s thick hide and roll harmlessly away. All this belied the adage, “God takes care of fools, drunks, and Red.” Undaunted, Red kept up the pressure. Kip Thomas was unusually aggressive, assaulting his old compeers as they were enemies to the knife. Three times we thought he was going to bag one but Jamie brushed aside his shots with an admonitory wag of his blocker.
All the Blue doughboys could do was hunker down in their dugouts and wait for the Red barrage to lift. For their de facto general they had Bill MacDowell on the bench. His Northface fiber-filled parka may have been red, but his heart was all blue as he paced behind the players and steeled their resolve in his own quiet way. When Kip Thomas put a strip-sack on Jim Heffern in the neutral zone, Bill gave the order to fix bayonets. Champing at the chin-straps, Blue awaited the signal to go “over the top”. Down 4-3 they finally got it from Saunders and made their break out.
Saunders tied the game with a shot from the hash marks that just cleared the far post, showing an aim as sharp as his tongue. If someone had videotaped Week 8 and then synchronized it with “Dark Side of the Moon” this would have been the part where Roger Waters sings, “The lunatic is in the hall.” With the game tied at fours, John Heffern showed a talent for idling gracefully in front of goal mouths and was able to lift the puck over a prostrate Marty. Jim Heffern and Bill Hamill then scored, extending Blue’s lead to three goals. With each defensive breakdown, each embarrassing lapse in concentration, Kenny would roll his eyes heavenward as if by histrionic displays of remorse he could somehow forestall Marty’s wrath. Marty saw through it, and burned with indignation even more.
At 8-4 Red mounted a brief comeback with Alan Blankstein and Eddie scoring again, narrowing the count to 8-6. But Alex Cerbone retaliated, once by finesse and once by main strength, scoring two goals that were effectively the game’s “check” and “mate”. Red was crestfallen, but Kip Thomas even more so. Feeling his pinny hang on his shoulders like a scarlet badge of shame, he wished he was back at the Hall, personalized beer mug in hand, watching the Pats and Colts battle it out to the sound of clicking billiard balls and bad country music.
Blue scored twice more, but they were hardly contested. Saunders got his second of the night, and that made two more notches in his lipstick case. And so it went: Blue won 12-6. On wearing Red, Kip’s comment after the game was a curt, “Not funny.” On losing the game he said, “Not even funnier.” Blue’s raptures had hardly subsided when they rose once again with a brief ceremony in locker room 4 when the club retired the peg on which Bill MacDowell used to hang his clothes (we could almost hear the voice of posterity remarking, “So that’s the peg!). After an impromptu speech Bill was twitted for his undisguised biased toward Blue. “It’s not a like or dislike thing,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve always thought Blue had more personality than Red.”
For the club’s drinking pleasure, Bill passed around a cider/rum concoction he called “applecello”. More easily made than its lemon cousin, it could be mixed on the spot. The proportions were one gallon of cider per one dirty neoprene water bottle’s worth of rum. Dixie cups stood everyone in lieu of champagne flutes. Paul Egan tossed off one cup’s worth and came right out of his shell, regaling the room with hilarious, spot-on impressions of the Hanson brothers from “Slapshot”. Apparently he had committed the movie’s entire script to memory as a means to while away the interminable winters growing up in Nova Scotia. Jim Heffern, too, fell under the spell of applecello as evidenced by Saunders charming him into trading two Newcastle Brown ales for two Coors Lights.
Cue, “All that you buy, beg, borrow, or steal.”
Droves of players came out for Week 8. We couldn’t tell whether it was for the holiday or because Kip was back. We counted four pairs of siblings alone: the Blanksteins, the Egners, the Thomases, and the Hefferns. Even Bill Hamill showed up for the first time since Week 1. That he didn’t bring Oliver seemed worse than an oversight, and bordered on negligence. Sure, one or two of the more ornery club members complained the deep benches would cut into their ice time, but on the whole the mood couldn’t have been peppier. It was just a matter of telling Paul Egan to pipe down or go back to Canada.
Showing up for the first time in Week 8—as Kip did—had its drawbacks. He was completely in Kenny’s thrall, without station, caste, or team. And who can say what private grudges lurk in Kenny’s disordered mind? All we know is that he put Kip in a red pinny. But did he then stack the teams in Blue’s favor as some sort of twisted plot to humiliate him? We’ll let the conspiracists sort this one out.
A game that would end with a whimper began with an Alan Blankstein bang, giving Red the lead 1-0. Red led 2-0 after Jim Heffern, playing defense for Blue, pulled a “Bob Freiling” backchecking and Eddie jumped on it, beating Jamie for the score. Jim, it should be noted, is the only player in Old Bucks who can play defenseman and still have trouble backchecking. Alex Cerbone threaded Marty’s five-hole to make it 2-1, but George Bassert responded, making it 3-1. Red at this point was the dominant team hands-down. But the chances they blew were folly-grade. Like when Scott Egner lured Jamie way out of goal and then set up John Lupisella for the open-netter. That John’s backhand went wide shows the pitfalls of putting a southpaw on right-wing. Worse, Mark Egner had an open-netter only to have his shot bounce off Craig Allen’s thick hide and roll harmlessly away. All this belied the adage, “God takes care of fools, drunks, and Red.” Undaunted, Red kept up the pressure. Kip Thomas was unusually aggressive, assaulting his old compeers as they were enemies to the knife. Three times we thought he was going to bag one but Jamie brushed aside his shots with an admonitory wag of his blocker.
All the Blue doughboys could do was hunker down in their dugouts and wait for the Red barrage to lift. For their de facto general they had Bill MacDowell on the bench. His Northface fiber-filled parka may have been red, but his heart was all blue as he paced behind the players and steeled their resolve in his own quiet way. When Kip Thomas put a strip-sack on Jim Heffern in the neutral zone, Bill gave the order to fix bayonets. Champing at the chin-straps, Blue awaited the signal to go “over the top”. Down 4-3 they finally got it from Saunders and made their break out.
Saunders tied the game with a shot from the hash marks that just cleared the far post, showing an aim as sharp as his tongue. If someone had videotaped Week 8 and then synchronized it with “Dark Side of the Moon” this would have been the part where Roger Waters sings, “The lunatic is in the hall.” With the game tied at fours, John Heffern showed a talent for idling gracefully in front of goal mouths and was able to lift the puck over a prostrate Marty. Jim Heffern and Bill Hamill then scored, extending Blue’s lead to three goals. With each defensive breakdown, each embarrassing lapse in concentration, Kenny would roll his eyes heavenward as if by histrionic displays of remorse he could somehow forestall Marty’s wrath. Marty saw through it, and burned with indignation even more.
At 8-4 Red mounted a brief comeback with Alan Blankstein and Eddie scoring again, narrowing the count to 8-6. But Alex Cerbone retaliated, once by finesse and once by main strength, scoring two goals that were effectively the game’s “check” and “mate”. Red was crestfallen, but Kip Thomas even more so. Feeling his pinny hang on his shoulders like a scarlet badge of shame, he wished he was back at the Hall, personalized beer mug in hand, watching the Pats and Colts battle it out to the sound of clicking billiard balls and bad country music.
Blue scored twice more, but they were hardly contested. Saunders got his second of the night, and that made two more notches in his lipstick case. And so it went: Blue won 12-6. On wearing Red, Kip’s comment after the game was a curt, “Not funny.” On losing the game he said, “Not even funnier.” Blue’s raptures had hardly subsided when they rose once again with a brief ceremony in locker room 4 when the club retired the peg on which Bill MacDowell used to hang his clothes (we could almost hear the voice of posterity remarking, “So that’s the peg!). After an impromptu speech Bill was twitted for his undisguised biased toward Blue. “It’s not a like or dislike thing,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve always thought Blue had more personality than Red.”
For the club’s drinking pleasure, Bill passed around a cider/rum concoction he called “applecello”. More easily made than its lemon cousin, it could be mixed on the spot. The proportions were one gallon of cider per one dirty neoprene water bottle’s worth of rum. Dixie cups stood everyone in lieu of champagne flutes. Paul Egan tossed off one cup’s worth and came right out of his shell, regaling the room with hilarious, spot-on impressions of the Hanson brothers from “Slapshot”. Apparently he had committed the movie’s entire script to memory as a means to while away the interminable winters growing up in Nova Scotia. Jim Heffern, too, fell under the spell of applecello as evidenced by Saunders charming him into trading two Newcastle Brown ales for two Coors Lights.
Cue, “All that you buy, beg, borrow, or steal.”