Digging Deep

Game Report

January 30, 2009

Killer Strawberries 5 Spitfires 0


For the Killer Strawberries who bothered to show up for the match against the well-abhored Spitfires, the pre-game sentiment in the dressing was not unlike that customarily experienced by a first time patient about to undergo a three fingered prostate exam administered by Hulk Hogan’s bigger brother. In the previous 2 matchups between these two teams, there was not an ounce of goodwill left by the time the final buzzer clanged. To say that these 2 squads dislike each other would be like saying the Strawbs have a mild dislike for referee Napoleon Fizzlercracker and his Travelling Incompetence Road Show..

By the Zamboni’s last lap of surface polishing, there were 8 intrepid Strawbs laced up, including Jesse The Leak, who would go on to shine this evening. Seven skaters, with an average age of 50, is usually a recipe for exhaustion by minute 5 of the first period in the cleanest of games. This matchup did not portend much hockey cleanliness.

And where were the 5 pusillanimous pudds who callously left their team in this vile predicament. Well, I’ll tell you. Dr. Thug, claiming to be suffering from his nth hundredth self-administered concussion, was in Las Vegas filming a celebrity wrestling match with the Victoria’s Secret models. Sure. And Butcher Brophey is a vegetarian. Shiny Sean claimed he had to take one of his kids to a hospital in Barrie. Everybody knows there are no hospitals in Barrie or anywhere within 50 miles of that den of constantly snarled traffic. Methinks he was at Casino Rama to play a little poker and to catch the Al Martino concert.

Archilles Perron could not make it because he had a little blister on his thumb from doing the dishes. This is a Strawb’s first….an injury from doing housework. Poor baby. The pain must be excrutiating.

And where was Pyjama Man, the once reliable point getter who has fallen on hard times in the scoring department. Well, he hired a babysitter for his girls and proceeded to spend the night babysitting the babysitter. Who was the babysitter? Why, it turned out to be his main squeeze, Loans Jones, whom he hadn’t seen since their salacious afternoon tryst which ended at 3pm in stall #4 of the women’s washroom at their City Hall workplace. While the Strawbs are unamused by his absence from the Spitfire game, they do heartily congratulate him upon the creative use of his 5 minute afternoon coffee break. Just don’t let it happen again, you priapetic toad.

The absence roster was completed by Warrin’ Peace, the team’s secret captain and official waterboy. His excuse…he had to stay home to clean up the mess left behind by his wife’s co-workers, unruly nurses, who, earlier in the day, had engaged in a clothes optional wild bacchanalian fling involving copious quantities of wine and much acrimony towards the management at their place of employ. Warrin’ predicts all the drywall damage will be repaired by next game, Great Gitchigoomi willing.

On the ice, the Spitfires had personnel problems of their own. They eked a squad as equally depleted as the aging Strawbs. Unfortunately, the skaters who showed up were their biggest meatheads, drooling like mangy rabied dogs at the chance to chop, hack and slice. Didn’t matter. The Strawberries took it to their much detested foe. They scored early. They defended their territory like Homer’s ancient Trojans. Unlike the valiant Trojans, however, the Strawberries defences were not breached. Jesse The Leak was impenetrable, using his speed, youthful guile and the width of the goalposts to his advantage. On one play, he stacked his pads to his left and blew up his chest to the right as he careened flawlessly across the crease, thus robbing an astonished Spitter of a sure goal. His play was ably assisted by some stalwarts on defence: the lovely orange-socked, recently fiftied Sir Gawdawful Gumby: by the team’s able surgeon, Butcher Brophey and by the wily, calorie-gulping Vice. These men kept the puck almost exclusively on the perimeter all night. It is difficult to recall a game so well played in the defensive zone.

At forward, Freight Train Laronde was spectacular. In the dressing room, he predicted he would score, and, like the Babe, was true to his prognostication. Likea tsunami of rogue waves assaulting the shore, he bombarded the opposition’s net with strike after lightning strike. He did not score again but he certainly deserved to.

Slickery Mac was also a constant offensive threat. He notched three tallies on the 800 shots he propelled at the hapless Spits’goaler. On one shot, he managed to perform a bloodless tracheotomy on the poor fellow, leaving him gasping for air late in the first period. MagBoy was his customary burr under the saddle and managed to piss off every Spit, both referees and one of the two timekeepers. “Sorry I didn’t get around the second timekeeper” he stated ruefully after the match. “ fully expected to return to the Sin Bin before game’s end and I would have finished the job properly. Just didn’t get the chance.” He did, however, atone for his shortfall, by placing an expletive filled anonymous phone call to the poor girl’s dormroom just after midnight.

The Ice Marshal, the last of the forwards to be mentioned herein, was voted 8th star of the game by his buddy, the blind-to-his-own-faults, P. Gumbington Pettigrew. “I thought he played like a big fat slug on Demerol” asserted P. Gumbington. “Nothing the loss of 25 pounds and a little effort can’t cure.” This from a man who spent the previous seven days drinking 4 litres of Scotch per diem as he scoffed down salted peanuts and No Name potato chips by the vatful while never leaving his couch, all in the name of his 50th birthday week celebrations. At the presser following the game, the Ice Marshal defended himself from Gumby’s callous calumny by averring that he never uses Demerol, preferring to suck it up like a real man.

Final score…Killer Strawberries 5 Spitters 0. Take that you gravy sucking pigs.

Following the game, the happy Strawbs convened at the Terminal Tavren to relish their latest victory on the road to the Championship. They were joined by the numerous adorers and hangers-on who had witnessed the earlier immolation of their opponents. Backs were slapped, bums pinched and the absentees toasted to hell.

5 Bud, 7 Guinness, 2 Blue, 3 Stella, 1 Black and Tan, 3 pounds of chicken wings, a vat of perogies and memories of the other Trojan War were consumed.